Hurt Bird

[wacki]

A question of morals.

I found a bird in the middle of the road. It was flapping around so I picked it up. One wing and two legs are moving. The other wing is motionless. I put it in a safe spot behind some bushes, and it has simply layed there for about an hour. It is not a species of bird that carries the West Nile virus, and considering where I found it and it's symptoms, it seems pretty obvious it's injured and not sick.
The bird is breathing heavily and looks as if it's in intense pain as it is not afraid of humans at all.


A friend told me that the answer to the problem is to break it's neck. I agree, however, neither he nor I are want to do this. At the same time I don't want it to suffer. What should I do?

[M2d]

just snap its neck and leave it. something will eat it.

[ThaSaltCracka]

ummm.... just leave it, something will eat it. Nature isn't fair man.

[daryn]

put it out of its misery if you're gonna be thinking about it all day.

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
put it out of its misery if you're gonna be thinking about it all day.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know your right. I'm just a sucker for animals and don't want to do it. I have some good drugs in the lab, might give it a painless death. I could do that.

God I'm such a wuss.

[daryn]

i really like animals too and would probably kill the bird also. i'd feel bad about it but really, it's better than suffering.

[West]

I found a bird exactly like this once in the middle of the road. Figuring that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to touch it with my bare hands, I used my undershirt to pick it up. I put it in my car, drove home, and put it in a cardboard box. We kept birdfeeders, so I think we had some seed, so we put some in a corner of the box, along with some water, although we weren't sure if it would be able to eat. I don't know if it's neck was broken, or what exactly, but I think so, as it didn't make it through the night.

I don't know if there's any health reasons not to do this, but you could bring it inside so it can die without being eaten by a cat or something. I would put it somewhere quiet so as not to terrify it any further.

The drugs idea obviously might be an answer if you know what you are doing - maybe call a vet for advice in that regard?

[Toro]

[ QUOTE ]
A question of morals.

I found a bird in the middle of the road. It was flapping around so I picked it up. One wing and two legs are moving. The other wing is motionless. I put it in a safe spot behind some bushes, and it has simply layed there for about an hour. It is not a species of bird that carries the West Nile virus, and considering where I found it and it's symptoms, it seems pretty obvious it's injured and not sick.
The bird is breathing heavily and looks as if it's in intense pain as it is not afraid of humans at all.


A friend told me that the answer to the problem is to break it's neck. I agree, however, neither he nor I are want to do this. At the same time I don't want it to suffer. What should I do?

[/ QUOTE ]
Too bad you didn't live near me in Central Massachusetts and then you could take it Tufts University Veternary School in Grafton. They would look the bird over and tell you that yes they can save it and it will only cost you about $4000 in fees.

[Dominic]

1. Grow a set of man-sized balls.

2. Snap it's neck.

[Boris]

If you don't want to kill it, you could bring it home and try to nurse it back to health.

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
If you don't want to kill it, you could bring it home and try to nurse it back to health.

[/ QUOTE ]

Went up to the bird with some chloroform and a big rock. Actually was going to kill it, but the bird actually moved it's other wing. It's still in pain, but now I'm thinking of actually doing this. I guess this officially makes me a tree hugging hippy. Oh well.

[Dominic]

what I don't get is that with this poor bird mortally wounded outside, you're going back and forth just so you can post about it on here!

Instead of soliciting a majority opinion on what you should do, just put the damn thing out of its misery OR walk the fuk away!

sheesh.

[Boris]

Don't listen to Dominic. He is a heartless bastard. Do the right thing and try to save the poor little guy. You'll feel better about yourself.

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
Don't listen to Dominic. He is a heartless bastard. Do the right thing and try to save the poor little guy. You'll feel better about yourself.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's over,
Went out there with a box, but just saw the bird coated in ants and slugs. He was a good ten feet away from where I left him so either he was killed by somebody else, or he managed to move ten feet. I don't think he moved that distance by himself so I'm guessing someone killed him. He could've been running from the ants, but I really hope that wasn't the case.

Oh well, thanks for the posts guys.

[astroglide]

i had something similar happen. there was a birdnest in a tree in front of my old gf's house. gf's family had a new, young, aggressive outdoor cat. somehow a baby bird ended up on the ground, old enough to move but it probably couldn't fly well. the cat was toying with it, poking/biting/etc but not enough to kill. the parent birds were circling feet overhead and making constant obviously distressed noises. i managed to trap the cat to get him to drop the bird. it appeared to be mortally wounded, and i killed it by dropping a huge garden rock on it. at the time i was a strict vegetarian.

[Duke]

What should you do (have done)?

Well, if you want to, and think that the bird can be saved, then go for it. bring him inside, clean him up, try to straighten out the wing so it'll heal , and all that good [censored].

If you think it's past that, and he's going to die no matter what, then kill it quick. "Not having the heart" to let it stop suffering makes no sense. Yeah it sucks to kill something that you have no hatred for, but it's for the best given the circumstances.

I have experience with this. When my sister was 9 she stepped on a nail and punctured her foot. I did the right thing, and put her out of her misery.

~D

[nicky g]

"it appeared to be mortally wounded, and i killed it by dropping a huge garden rock on it. "

I did the same thing to a pigeon that had had a wing ripped off by a cat in our garden. I like animals a lot too and found it a hard thing to do. But there was no way it was coming back from that kind of injury, and it seemed in a lot of distress.

[Joseph Busti]

[ QUOTE ]
I have experience with this. When my sister was 9 she stepped on a nail and punctured her foot. I did the right thing, and put her out of her misery.


[/ QUOTE ]

ROFLMFAO

[Ray Zee]

" it appeared to be mortally wounded, and i killed it by dropping a huge garden rock on it. at the time i was a strict vegetarian "

so if you werent a vegetarian you would have eaten it. ick.

[Ray Zee]

most animals kinda shut down their pain and die. thats the way of the outdoors. nature can be cruel looking but has evolved over time to let others benefit from ones demise. so i vote to let him make his own way out.
sometimes they are just stunned with a concusion and recover and fly away. killing it doesnt give it this chance. and robs the things that need a live animal to eat to survive. balance of nature.

[benfranklin]

[ QUOTE ]
" it appeared to be mortally wounded, and i killed it by dropping a huge garden rock on it. at the time i was a strict vegetarian "

so if you werent a vegetarian you would have eaten it. ick.

[/ QUOTE ]

A local talk radio show had a guest from an organization that takes care of injured and captured raptors and gets them back to health. They had a horned owl that someone had found injured and tried to take care of himself. Being a vegetarian, the good samaritan fed the owl a vegetarian diet. Since owls basically eat mice, the owl developed rickets and its growth was severely stunted. The raptor society got hold of the owl, is correcting its diet, and trying to teach it how to hunt mice. It is likely the bird will never be able to be freed. Leave stuff like healing birds to the professionals. If I was going to do anything, I'd put the bird in a box or something and drop it off at a vet.

[bosoxfan]

[ QUOTE ]
Too bad you didn't live near me in Central Massachusetts and then you could take it Tufts University Veternary School in Grafton. They would look the bird over and tell you that yes they can save it and it will only cost you about $4000 in fees.


[/ QUOTE ]

My wife brought our stupid cat to Tufts. Had an operation to remove one of my daughters hair elastic things from it's intestine to the tune of $600. It died 6 months after the operation. I hate cats and Tufts!!!

[Duke]

[ QUOTE ]
Being a vegetarian, the good samaritan fed the owl a vegetarian diet.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well using an obvious moron as an example for why nobody who lacks the "Veterinarian" title should try to help animals is kinda bad. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would do the proper research so they'd help the animal out the right way.

~D

[Homer]

[ QUOTE ]
what I don't get is that with this poor bird mortally wounded outside, you're going back and forth just so you can post about it on here!

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, we all know he's pretending to go back and forth in a thinly velied attempt to create the longest thread in the history of 2+2.

[ QUOTE ]
Instead of soliciting a majority opinion on what you should do, just put the damn thing out of its misery OR walk the fuk away!

sheesh.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, no need to point out the obvious. Only losers think before they act.

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
most animals kinda shut down their pain and die. thats the way of the outdoors. nature can be cruel looking but has evolved over time to let others benefit from ones demise. so i vote to let him make his own way out.
sometimes they are just stunned with a concusion and recover and fly away. killing it doesnt give it this chance. and robs the things that need a live animal to eat to survive. balance of nature.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ray Zee looks like you were right about the concusion! That bird I saw coated in ants wasn't the same bird. It's kind of funny, all those times I checked on the bird it hadn't moved. The one time I went out to kill it, it was gone and I saw another dead bird instead. When I left work about 3 in the morning, I went to my car, and what was sitting in front of my car? The hurt bird!!! Anyway, I took it home and fed it bread, seed and water. The first day it couldn't even keep it's eyes open, the second day it flew out of the box twice, but couldn't keep it's balance well enough to walk. It must of had a concusion. This morning it was begging to get out of the box I had it in, so I let it go. It was still weak and hadn't eaten much, but considering how badly it wanted to get out, I decided it was best to let it go.
It was kind of funny, when I finally did let it go, it just stared at me and took several minutes before it actually decided to fly away.


Heres' Tweety!

http://parazen.bio.indiana.edu/Tweety.png

[West]

thats awesome - very glad to hear

[Knockwurst]

Wacki -- Bless you, you're a decent soul, and I've got a feeling that it's not the last we've heard from that little bird.