Talk about your interesting day at work
This morning things were insane at the shelter. We finally had some open kennels in the dog part.....and i tell you what- as soon as we get some open they seem to fill up!
In a matter of 10 minutes we had 3 dogs come in (two being returned
but that's another story!) Then about an hour later we had another one. Mondays lately have been crazy at the shelter because the guy who's over everything cut one of our staff members (our receptionist) on mondays to save money. So not only do we have to do meds/shots/ clean/etc...we now have to try and get the phones/run the pcs at the same time. This morning- we had a lady bring in 3 little ducklings in a recycling bin container.So after my lunch break today (i go home to feed my foster kittens on my lunches) I went back to the shelter and put them in a carrier to take them to a park and release them. When there are little ducklings like that you can usually sneak up on a momma duck's nest that has young ducklings at a similar age and put them into the nest when she's not paying attention- usually they will take them. Haha that was not my luck today!
So i go over to the park by our city hall- there is a big pond there with and it's in a nice area. I only was able to find two momma ducks with two broods. Both were in the water though so i couldn't sneak the ducks in by the nests. So i held one of the ducklings in my hand down so the momma could see it (didn't know a better way) and she tried to attack it so i snatched it away quickly. The other momma would have nothing to do with them eithor so that didn't work!!!
(there weren't many mommas with ducklings there at that park today). Wouldn't you know it- as soon as i get ready to leave, someone sees my shirt (animal control) and says- "there's an african parrot in a tree" - so um yeah can you imagine my response
A WHAT!!!So that was just amusing - i thought the person was joking but they weren't lol. He pointed me in the direction of the tree -and sure enough- there was an African Gray parrot up there!!!! I called my shelter and talked to my boss to tell her - she said that eariler in the week there was a report of a missing one- someone had broken into a home and stolen some things, including an african gray (they're expensive birds) so we think it's that one. So she sent two more animal control officers out there to help me. They didn't believe me till they saw it in the tree lol.It was too funny!!! We tried to get him to come down from the branches by talking / whistling (hehe well they whistled- i can't!) He hopped down a little bit- so we stuck a dog pole (used to catch strays with) up there to see if he'd hop on it- but no such luck
We tried for a good 1/2 hour to get him to come down. Then one of my coworkers moved his truck under the tree and climbed on top truck with the pole to try and get closer- of course that didn't work -the bird flew up higher
So we called some of our buddies at the fire dpt (city hall, the park, the libary, and the fire dpt are all clusted together so they were really close) they brought a little ladder- haha like that's gonna work! And tried to get him that way- that's when the bird took off and flew to another tree- so we went over there and tried again...apparently he got annoyed with us whistling and calling him because he flew to another tree (uhhh owners really need to clip their birds wings!!!!). At that point one of the firefighters brought some grapes over from the kitchen in the fire house to see if he'd try to get them. He threw them up into the tree trying to get the birds attention. lol the bird thought he was playing and was just chirping up a storm:
(keep in mind there were lots of interested onlookers now at this point wondering what 4 firefighters, 3 AC officers, and an African Gray were doing in the park lol). This went on until 3pm
We had no luck at all catching that bird - so we called it a day and are going to try to get it again tomorrow- we notified the people we suspect to be the owners and they are going to come tomorrow with the other AC officers (i'm off on tues/wed) to try and see if the bird will come to them. Keep your fingers crossed the bird stays in the same area!!!!!! So yeha....lol not every day you see an African Gray in a park!Talk about amusing!!!!!!! After that interesting event- i tried 3 other parks to try and relase my 3 little ducklings in but once again had no luck- so they're at the shelter in a cage with food/nests - my boss said she'd try some other parks tomorrow and see if she has any luck.
Man- it sure was one interesting day today
My coworkers and I all felt like idiots because we couldn't catch that darn parrot- but then again none of us have a lot of experience catching african grays in a park
) Hopefully they can get him tomorrow!!!
Man- it sure was one interesting day today