She’s A Salty Cracker

(I do community service part-time for a local wildlife hospital. My job is mainly to clean bird cages and provide them with food, but I answer emergency phone calls when no one else is around to take them. Today, I’m about to clock out and we get a call. I accept the request to rescue a bird on the beach at the other side of town. It’s inconvenient, but rescues are usually more interesting than cleaning cages, so I accept. Halfway to the bird, I get a call back from the person who called the bird in.)

Caller: “Hello, uh, miss? I think someone’s trying to drown it.”

Me: “Maybe you should get them not to do that. I can’t give a bird CPR, and it’s not much of a rescue if it dies.”

(Ten minutes later, I got to the beach. A woman who was clearly a tourist had been dunking the poor bird in seawater because she thought it looked thirsty. While some birds actually can drink seawater without a problem, this was not one of those birds. The bird was still alive by the time I picked it up, but it was choking from the salt the whole way back to the rescue center.)