Stork Eats Baby Bird to Put Out of Misery

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Mikey1981 PetForums Newbie

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Before reading this mail service, please retrieve before judging me.
I am a animal loving bloke who has over the years been ridiculed by friends who don't understand the empathy I have for animals. I care more than for animals than i do most humans.

Last night I looked out of a window in my house to encounter my cat "playing" with a baby bird. I rushed outside and shooed my cat away, much to her dislike!

I picked upward the small bird which was half the size of the palm of my hand. It was visibly shocked and completely vulnerable and had a small cut around information technology's throat area, but it didn't announced to be a puncture wound that would exist life threatening. It must have only been a couple of weeks former at near. I immediately thought almost leaving it where information technology was so that it's mother may come and detect it, but our neighbourhood has cats everywhere. I decided to put it in an open container and place it in a tree which would be kept out of accomplish of praying cats, in hope that the female parent would come and pick it up.

After a couple of hours it was articulate that the mother was nowhere to be seen and it was getting dark and common cold. I decided I would bring it into the house to keep information technology warm and endeavor to give it some food. I spent a fair bit of time online looking at means to help young fledgling birds. Unfortunately my boondocks doesn't accept whatever Animal charities that would choice up the bird a this time of night so I was pretty much on my own to deal with this. My thought was to effort and help it through the dark and then drop it into the vets the post-obit morning, if information technology had survived.

I had a syringe which I had used to feed one of my now departed cats so i mash up some cat food with water and fed the paste through the syringe. I kept on doing this every 15 minutes for a couple of hours. The immature bird was hungry and appeared to be surviving. I made sure I kept it in a room abroad from my true cat, However, later in the evening I went out of the house for a smoke. When i came back in I noticed my cat had somehow gained access to the room and had the babe bird in it'south rima oris. When I somewhen wrestled the bird form her it was clear that the poor bird had another bleeding spot on it's cervix. I panicked, looked at the poor animate being and decided Information technology would exist more humane to put information technology out of it'due south misery, rather than allow information technology to die of starvation/dehydration which is what a lot of internet sites said would happen.

The bird was clearly in distress and I toyed with numerous ideas of how to put it out of it's misery. Somewhen I summoned upward the courage to place it under h2o. I didn't think it had a lot left in it, because what it had been through.

HOW Wrong I WAS!

The bird took over 3 minutes to laissez passer away, I felt every desperate movement it made to cling on to life. Eventually I pulled it up from the water and it was even so animate slightly. I placed information technology nether the water again until it had stopped breathing completely. And so I broke downwards. The feeling of having something else's life in my hands and making a decision to end it's life has had a serious effect on me. I blacked out soon afterwards and was physically sick. I couldn't sleep for most of the night and woke up this morning time feeling terrible guilt. Peradventure i was wrong to cease it's life prematurely? I also feel that I acquired it a huge amount of distress in "drowning" the bird which so conspicuously wanted to live. I tin't seem to get the feeling of it'southward drastic attempts to survive out of my head. I buried it in garden last night.

Tin can anyone help me with this huge sense of guilt? What would you have washed? Was I right to put information technology out of it's misery or should I have waited until the morning?
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Y'all did what you idea was for the best... it's not like you took pleasance in torturing it etc... personally i would have left it with the cat & let nature take it's form.
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For Christs sake..a sharp rap on the back of the caput with a metal object if you accept to kill a bird..or a mouse ...or a rat.But to drown annihilation is a encarmine atrocious way to impale.Not a good choice for the poor thing.
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I hold
How awful

:nonod: :nonod: :nonod: :nonod: :nonod:
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I'm distressing that you lot have had to deal with this. I've had to nurse babe birds a couple of times and it's stressful in itself. I'1000 afraid I wouldn't have been able to put the bird out of it'south misery - I just couldn't. Not necessarily the best matter for the bird, I know.
As a upshot I was unaware how humane drowning was as a method of euthanasia until this thread. It's upsetting to read so must have been very traumatic for the bird and yourself. Please don't beat yourself up well-nigh this; you did what you thought was kindest in a stressful situation. It's obvious yous are an animate being lover and were only trying to practise the correct thing.
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If a cat catches a Bird even though at that place are no visible marks that y'all tin can see information technology is best to either have it to the nearest vet where they will cheque the bird over and give an antibiotic injection (there is no accuse for this) or accept information technology to the nearest wild fauna Hospital where they will await later on it.
If zippo can be washed then they will put the poor thing to sleep humanly.
All birds caught by cats need an antibody injection.
I have only recently learnt this by taking a baby blackbird to the wildlife hospital.
If at that place are no wildlife hospitals in your area look in the yellow pages or on- line for Bird breeders.
You did what you could merely drowning is not the right fashion just I call up y'all know that at present.
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Let this exist a lesson. When you notice a wild bird out of its nest, imho leave it to nature.
Jeez y'all guys, shut up. This person feels horrible and I understand how much guilt tin can hurt so stop beingness then inhumane yourselves and provide some sympathy for someone who was ONLY TRYING TO Practice THE RIGHT THING. They KNOW what they did was wrong, so stop thinking y'all need to tell them.
Yous're right to be distressing, considering drowning wasn't the best fashion to go, but know this, the bird is not in pain anymore, its soul, energy, being, whatever you want to phone call it, is at peace and moved on. That is how the universe works.
Just as you lot did what you naturally felt might be the to the lowest degree painful grade of expiry, the bird did what it naturally does which is try to survive fifty-fifty if it is making things worse for itself.

You both fabricated mistakes. Haemorrhage out for hours would have been far more painful than drowning for a few minutes, so you did some proficient.

The point is you learned your lesson, so accept condolement in knowing that this will never happen to you again because you lot now know better. Be lamentable because y'all accept to be, then move on, wiser than before. Maybe employ the guilt to assistance birds if you still experience terrible later awhile.
birdgirl PetForums Newbie

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Ive just joined and read this mail service. Drowning would not take been my option of putting annihilation out of its misery
Phoenix24 PetForums Senior

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All methods of euthanasia are horrible in their own way, information technology is only a difference of degrees of horribleness. Having tried a few different methods myself, including letting nature accept its own course, I can honestly say none are peculiarly nice. Terminal fourth dimension I broke downwards and sobbed for hours afterwards, and yet tin can't call up nearly information technology now.
I suppose the real lesson to exist learned here is, for goodness sake if you have a murdering cat don't get out its victim within reach! Sorry, stating the obvious, and hindsight is a wonderful matter and all.

Whoever said most cat bites and antibiotics - only 2 weeks ago a vet called me upward to have on a blackbird fledgling brought in by a cat. Assuming they had at least given information technology an antibiotic injection, I took it and fed it and and then on, until 3 days later it stopped eating, a lump grew on its throat and it was struggling to breathe. Another vet looked it over and said it was full of infection, and put it to sleep. Lesson: make certain the vet gives cat victims antibiotics.

Equally for the general intendance of fledglings, the OP (autonomously from not protecting it from the offending cat) did the right thing in waiting to see if the parents would return, and and then feeding a cat food mash through a syringe. In addition, you should proceed casualties warm and in a repose place, brand sure they get fluids, and feed approx every twenty-xxx mins (depending on size of bird) every bit much as it will take without overstuffing it.

Always attempt to become information technology to a wildlife friendly vet equally shortly equally is possible - fifty-fifty if its simply to get it checked over before either release, or existence taken into care by someone who tin do it. If this is you personally - yous have to be prepared to feed them dawn til dusk and make clean up their mess every day (or each feed if small nestlings), and provide the necessary infinite to transition them into being fit for release. You as well have to exist prepared for the likelihood that no matter how hard you try, sometimes they still simply don't make it. The hardest lesson of them all, I think.

And that concludes my soap box sermon for today. In case you are outraged at my disdain for cats - I do like cats, the trouble is there are so many and they cause so much damage to wild animals. A elementary bell collar is the minimum people should try, or having a house cat kept inside during the vulnerable fledging months.
Phoenix24 PetForums Senior

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That figure for 3 minutes is probably more suitably attributed to humans (or larger animals) which accept large lungs. A smaller beast with a college metabolism would probably 'run out' of air much sooner, plus with the stress and the claret loss its body would have already been shutting downwards. If the water was cold that would have as well speeded things forth - small birds use a lot of energy to proceed warm, and a young bird without a total plumage (yep even fledglings are sparse on feathers) would have chilled very chop-chop. I doubtfulness information technology was anywhere near 3 minutes, and it probably slipped into unconsciousness after seconds, not minutes. (what might have seemed like struggling may have been death throws).
Unless you lot get a clean hit and smash the poor thing's skull to smithereens on the start go - imagine the suffering at one-half-hearted attempts to bludgeon the bird to death. I take seen that go horribly wrong too (not at my hands, I must add).

Nature is a roughshod thing, birds die every day in all manner of means and 99.9% of the time we never even see it. I monitor nests every summertime and accept seen chicks starving to death in their nests, or the nest washed out and the chicks drowned or chilled. I have seen young birds ripped to bits by magpies and cats (and so discarded). And birds hitting by vehicles, exploding in a puff of feathers and guts.

So really, in the grand scheme of things, putting a young bird that probably would have died anyhow out of its misery is simply equally/no more terrible than the many other means information technology might accept died. Being consumed past infection from the cat'south bite - or subjected to weeks of stressful handling to try and save it (with a very small likelihood of success)? Or saving information technology from going through all of that? Hmmm, I know which I would rather.

Killing anything is a horrible business, like I already said, and y'all either grow hardened to it (I doubtable nigh farm-related animal deaths - slaughter houses for case - and people who go out and shoot things for pleasure [lets non forget how long information technology can take for something to dice of a bullet/shotgun/pellet wound, especially if it escapes being hit on the head past the hunter or grabbed past the hunting dog] fall into this category) or you lot never do. At least the OP cared something - enough to brave the inevitable torrent of disdain/admonishment for admitting having done it.
I've read this thread every time I saw information technology was commented on simply I wasn't sure what to say. Y'all've summed information technology up perfectly.
I don't think the OP needs to be beaten over the head on this forum for doing something that they thought was correct. This plain wasn't malicious and was washed to end suffering.