There were a few tense moments but a happy ending in Oil Springs as friends of Heaven’s Wildlife Rescue pulled a frozen duck from Bear Creek.
Peggy Jenkins got a call Thursday from the village who had heard from a couple who had been out walking and saw the duck near the bridge. “It was frozen in the creek,” she says.
Jenkins went down to take a look where exactly in the creek the duck was. “Luckily, the duck was in frozen part but it was frozen solid around the duck and she was looking pretty weak.”
Jenkins grabbed a hammer, screwdriver, towel, some hot water and a kennel as well as some rubber gloves and called her friends Lezlie Dafoe and Al Connell from the Midnight Riders Family Group to come to help. “They went down on the ice and poured the water on the ice near the duck…while Leslie was pouring, all was chipping his way through the ice around the duck.”
Once the duck was free, they discovered “a good half of the bottom of her body was frozen.”
Jenkins took the bird home and warmed it in a bath and within hours the duck was placed in a home. And she had a name – Frozen.
Jenkins says Heaven’s Wildlife Rescue gets calls about birds frozen into the ice frequently but is often unable to help.
“We get so many calls and the sad part of it is … there is nothing you can do because you can’t risk human life,” she says noting last week she got a call about a couple of swans who eventually freed themselves. “Every winter I probably get three calls a week duck, or geese.
“This one was neat – because it was right here and we could do something to help.”
