Oil-smothered goose rescued from Hamilton harbour
City, port authority and a wildlife refuge team up to save harbour honker from a mystery oil spill
An apparent mystery oil spill nearly killed a Canada goose last month before the city and Hamilton Port Authority teamed up with an animal rescue group to save the day.
It was a rare rescue for a few reasons — particularly since no one can find any spilled oil or floating pools of crude, which is the substance bird rescuers believe coated the unlucky migratory icon.
It’s also an ironic twist in a city where government agencies normally work to cut the harbour goose population by using — you guessed it — oil to destroy around 600 eggs a year.
Hobbitstee Wildlife Refuge founder Chantal Theijn said she was “thrilled” by the joint rescue effort — although she admitted to lingering concerns about the source of the oily mess.
“We’ve had no other reports of affected animals in the area, so I’m hoping it wasn’t anything big,” she said. “I’d hate to think there is a patch of crude oil floating around Lake Ontario somewhere.”
Theijn released the rehabilitated goose with Facebook video fanfare back into the harbour April 2 after a careful cleaning and more than a week of rehabilitation in the volunteer group’s Jarvis facility. (No, she didn’t name the bird — Theijn bristles when people “unhelpfully anthropomorphize” wildlife.)
She said the bird’s goose was almost cooked when the crew of a vessel on layup in Hamilton’s industrial port spotted the oilcovered waterfowl huddled miserably on the shore and alerted the port patrol office. “It couldn’t swim, it couldn’t walk ... It was in rough shape,” she said.
Theijn added that her group has occasionally responded to help birds that swim through diesel fuel spilled from boats or belched from drains connected to restaurants or garages. But she called this case “a real anomaly” because the substance appeared “heavy,” like crude oil. “That would be a first for us in Hamilton,” she said.
The port authority called in the city’s animal services department, then went on a hunt for possible oily culprits.
Nothing was found around the port itself, said spokesperson Larissa Fenn.
“There was no oil on the water where the bird was found, and waters around the port are monitored closely for sheen, discoloration or other indicators of pollution — so that part remains a bit of a mystery,” she said.
Animal services officers realized the oil-smothered bird needed “expert care” and called the wildlife refuge because of its expertise with injured birds, said supervisor Brad Potts.
Potts said Hobbitstee volunteers and animal service workers teamed up for a careful, threehour cleaning session using Dawn dish soap and specialized city tubs and showers.
Theijn posted video of the
cleaning, too — but urges people not to “try it at home,” noting different cleaning methods are needed for different animals as well as different oily substances.
Potts said the rescue effort didn’t cost the city much more than staff time, noting the volunteer wildlife group took the goose back to its donation-funded refuge for a week of rehabilitation.
Potts added the city’s broader goal of cutting down the goose population, which threatens the recovering harbour ecosystem, doesn’t affect whether animal services workers will step in to save an injured animal.
(Egg-oiling by all harbour landowners has stopped nearly
6,000 goslings from hatching since 2008.)
“People are very passionate about wildlife in this city. We’ll get like 10 phone calls for one injured goose,” he said. “If it’s injured wildlife, we want to help.”
Theijn agreed.
“It comes to down to the fact this animal is suffering like mad, so you can either euthanize that animal or try to help and return it to the wild,” she said.
“The problem is it’s a slippery slope, deciding if an animal deserves to live or not.”