Tom Jones, a deputy wildlife conservation officer with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, saw and heard the bird that was hanging upside down, held by one leg, screeching loudly in distress and flapping its wings.
He called Pat Cull, wildlife conservation officer for southern Mercer County, and the two of them soon saw that they couldn’t just climb the tree and try to help the gull.
The bird, about the size of a crow, was suspended over the river with a leg caught among twigs at the end of a sycamore tree branch.
Cull enlisted Sharon firefighters who arrived in the department’s ladder truck. They extended the boom so Cull, wearing leather welder’s gloves and stretched out on his stomach, could grab the gull, snap the pencil-thick twig and return to the ground to free its leg.
The bird continued to struggle, occasionally biting Cull’s fingers.
“Any time you dealing with a wild animal or a bird of that size it’s best to wear leather gloves because you don’t know what they’re going to do,” he said afterward. “He didn’t know if I was a predator or if I was there to help him. They’ll peck and grab whatever is close. It they could get an eyeball that would be good for them and maybe help them escape.”
Cull said it wasn’t clear how the bird had gotten trapped in the tree.
“We initially thought he got caught in some fishing line but there wasn’t any. Somehow, he got caught in the branches,” he said.
Cull spent a couple of minutes examining the bird to see if it was injured. He released it and the gull, apparently tired from its struggle, limping a little, took a minute or two to rest on the snowy ground, occasionally walking and trying its wings before it eventually flew away.
(Sharonherald - Feb 18, 2015)
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