Wildlife Rescue!

We arrived in Orlando late Monday night to spend the holidays with our family down here. After sleeping in the next day, Royce and I decided to go for a run in the afternoon warmth. The streets were really busy, so we decided to jog around some ponds in a nearby park. As we rounded the first pond, we heard something splash in the water. Upon a closer look, we saw a bird with his beak caught in the artificial liner of the pond. He must have been digging for bugs or worms and once his beak got burrowed into the material, his tiny teeth prohibited him from pulling his beak back out. Who knows how long he'd been there!

We first borrowed scissors from some people out in their backyard, but the scissors couldn't cut anything. So I ran back to the house to get better scissors (which is when I grabbed my camera). My brother took off his shirt so we could hold the bird down firmly, then while I held, he cut. It was quite the battle to get him all untangled.

When we finally got him freed and let him go, he swam off into the pond. At first we were afraid that he wasn't strong enough to make it to the other side of the pond......

...but he finally pulled himself out of the water, near the dock on the other side to dry himself off in the warm afternoon sun.
We didn't get our run in that afternoon, but we did do our spontaneous good deed for the day!