Egretta thula

As I was walking over to the mail room today around noon, I was greeted by the sight of a snowy egret rounding a corner and slowly waltzing towards me from the other end of the sidewalk. The egret was soon followed by short man on a cell phone who proceeded to yell "Don't scare him!!" in my general direction. This was a little jarring not only because I was getting yelled at by a man on a cell phone, but because egrets are usually near water (which there is none of anywhere near the medical center) and not casually walking around by the mail room. As the bird got nearer, it was evident that it was injured because its left wing was hanging so low as to drag on the ground. The scruffy gentleman on the cell phone and a friend of his were obviously trying to round up the bird and were trying to call someone who could help, so I explained that I volunteered with PW and that I was going to get a box and towel to catch the bird from my car and would be right back. Miraculously, the bird stayed in the same area and was still there when I got back with the supplies, and with some help from the two dudes, we managed to corner the bird, toss a towel over it, and get it into the carrier. The two guys were so excited that we accomplished this and began loudly exclaiming to each other that they'd done a good deed for the day. They proceeded to introduce themselves to me and then said that they'd love to be able to do more things like this and wanted information about volunteering and how they could help, because they were "looking to turn their lives around."

Now I don't give people a whole lot of credit, especially when it comes to dealing with animals (and given my experiences at PW with people like the guy who tried to feed steak to a cowbird, can you blame me?), but it was really heartening to see how much these guys cared about getting help for the bird and making sure that it got taken care of. A lot of times people see an injured animal and are like "Oh look - how sad." But here are two guys that are clearly down on their luck who did everything they could in this case, including calling PW to get help and find out what they should do, making absolutely sure that the bird didn't go anywhere before we could catch it, and then helping me wrangle the bird once we got all the necessary supplies. They were very insistent about wanting to help out and getting information on volunteering, but I didn't have any of the PW pamphlets with me, so I told them that they could get information on the Web site or that someone from the help line could probably take their address down and then send them some info.

It definitely adds a little spring to my step on days when I get to help out with a transport or can take an animal that needs help up to the care center, but it felt especially good seeing how excited those guys were and how important it was to them that they helped out the bird. It's nice to think that maybe, in a way, the bird helped them out, too.