Do They All Need Our Help?

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When I first began doing this rescuing stuff, I thought that everything I went after needed help and if I wasn’t able to capture my target, I had failed miserably. Now, after years of experience and hundreds of rescues, I have learned a lot about this job. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that not every animal we are called to assist actually needs our help.

There was a Great Blue Heron living in the Tempe area several years ago. The phone volunteer told me that he had an injured beak and that he had been seen at the golf course near The Pointe at South Mountain. I live close to that area so I drove over and found him right away. He was wading in shallow water on one of the fairways, looking down at the fish swimming around his feet. Looking closer, I saw that the outer two-thirds of his upper beak were missing. He appeared so sad as he stood there looking at the fish and he never saw me approaching. Behind a small tree and only four feet away, I could have easily netted him, but something held me back. I thought, “What can we do for this poor guy?” I knew we couldn’t make a prosthetic beak for him, he’d be almost impossible to force feed, and he seemed to be adapting as well as he could given the extent of his injury. If I grabbed him, he would be highly stressed by the capture and transport, and most likely be put to sleep after the ordeal anyway. It just seemed more appropriate to allow him to live out the rest of his life in the sunshine and the cool water, enjoying what was left of his life. I slowly backed away and watched him stalking the little fish at his feet, the picture of a an old fisherman with a broken pole trying to do what used to be second nature to him in past days of youthful glory. The next day he was gone from that pond and I didn’t see him again. I always wondered if I had chosen the best course of action about him until…

I got a call one day about three years later about a Great Blue hanging around a pond on another golf course in the Tempe area. They said he had fishing line hanging from his bill and wing. I drove out to the course and saw this bird, wading in a shallow pond along one of the greens, fishing line draped from the back of his neck down to his left wing. As I slowly approached him, he turned slightly and I saw his beak: his upper bill missing the last two-thirds! It was my old friend! I was overjoyed to see he was still alive…and even more pleased that my assessment three years earlier had been correct. I got a little closer and he looked over at me and, ever so gracefully, flew away down the course. I followed for a few minutes, but each time I got close, he’d look at me and fly another few hundred yards, eventually landing in a large tree. I smiled and returned to my car, knowing that he was a consummate survivor, able to adapt to whatever life, or humans, threw at him. He didn’t need my help now just as he didn’t need it three years ago. This is the guy that nature wants, needs in the gene pool. He confirms what I have learned so gradually over the years. Not every animal that seems to be having a problem needs our help. It’s incumbent upon us to use our supposedly superior intellect to determine where we should intervene, and where we should just slowly back off, smile, and say to ourselves, “Go for it! Enjoy life on your terms and live it as well as you can for as long as you can. I won’t interfere.”

That particular Great Blue Heron has been affectionately named “Half Face” by the rescue community. As well as he’s learned to adapt to his condition and his environment, he’ll probably out live me!