Rescuing Creatures
This morning on the dog walk, I found a bumble bee by the side of the road seemingly in good enough state with his wings buzzing and everything intact. I reckoned some honey would do the trick and took him home. However, he didn’t seem able to produce a proboscis to suck up the honey. I put him on a geranium which after a few hours had enfolded him in its petals.
Bee enfolded in geranium
I recalled from a few weeks before, managing to get a very weak bee to take some honey, and he flew off back into nature. Actually I’ve succeeded in this kind of revival many times.
Some of the most successful rescues have been fruit flies that seem to be able to survive warm water, hot drinks and even wine. 
They have amazing survival powers.
I have rescued many a worm from the sides of roads and certain death. They come out in the rain and get caught in rivulets. I just toss or carry them into grassy safety. Recently I put a long worm into soft damp earth. It had been run over but was still moving. I looked the next day and it had moved on.
We saw three seagulls lying in the road, clearly hit by some big vehicle. Two of them were dead but there was life in the third. We put it in a box, took it home and opened the box in the garden. Twenty minutes later it ventured forth and flew up but not going straight away. It circled the garden two times. I like to think possibly a seagull sign of gratitude.
The thing about picking up creatures like that is they’re an attraction to other creatures, especially birds, which puts themselves in danger. I don’t know how much roadkill I have put into the side, giving them a rough burial – mostly possums, small birds like sparrows and waxeyes, and big ones such as pukeko (purple swamp hen), which seem to have not a scrap of sense of the dangers on the roads.
My wife does her best to keep our two cats inside, especially at dawn and dusk, but they still manage to catch birds, rats and mice. I am surprised we have any wildlife left in our garden.
A long time ago, on our honeymoon on an island in the north of New Zealand, I rescued a seagull seriously caught in some fishnet. It took nearly half an hour but creatures know when they’re being helped. He was able to fly again.
When we were first living back in New Zealand on the Kapiti Coast on a couple of acres with a pine forest at the back, I nearly stepped on a fledgling thrush that had fallen from its nest way up high. Fortunately the grass was thick and the featherless bird was light, so there was no harm. For several weeks we nurtured “Tweetly” as he came to be called because of his sounds. He got feathers, he flew in the garden, always came back. One day we decided he had to go into the wild and took him a fair distance. Next day our neighbours reported “the strangest thing”, a bird had tried to get into their house, tame and friendly as anything. I hope Tweetly went back to the wild to live well where he belonged.
We saw a photo and article about a cat for rescue in our local newspaper. Without thinking that we would be able to get him, “Hoppy” easily came into our lives. He had a life before he came to us at about age six, a four-legged life. After someone managed to shoot at him and hit a front leg, he had to have several operations at the SPCA. We knew him only with three legs, and named him after the way he moved.
In Japan, we tried to rescue a few kittens found alone in parks, without much success. However, there was one wonderful rescue. Here is the start of “A Costly Fall in Tokyo”, the full version plus photos can be found in the Japan section in this book.
One roasting Saturday morning in July, 2001 in Takadanobaba, Tokyo, Beth and I heard a kitten give a pitiful meow in a nearby park. From our third floor balcony we could see it weak and struggling. I went down and found him alone in the intense heat, trying to climb up some steps, as if to find shelter or succour. I picked him up and took him home to safety.
When I was a child in the heathery hills of NE Scotland, my father found a lovely white cat caught in a hideous gin trap whose teeth firmly held cat’s back leg. Being a kind man, my father took time and care to release her leg but the vet had to remove the damaged limb. “Whitey” still had a long life of moving quite well.
On the Kapiti Coast, a brown hen appeared one day on our property, no idea where she came from. We named her “Friendly” because of her pleasant and attaching nature. Apart from which she was blind. A long time later we learned that there had been a blind hen at the Steiner School a couple of kilometres away. Maybe she didn’t like the noise of the children.
We rescued a number of other hens to keep her company and us in eggs.
We took in a couple of cockerels too until they became too much of a nuisance. Luckily there was a farm not far away that specialised in taking them and giving them fields to run about in.
In January, 2025 the New Zealand government increased the speed limit on 37 country roads from 80 kms an hour to 100. My first thought was for the increased number of creatures that would be killed.
The saddest losses are the ones I feel are doing OK, feeding all right, maybe managing five or six days. One of the worst was a house martin that couldn’t fly, no matter how many times I tried to get him airborne.
Apart from that he looked well but was dead in his box maybe about the sixth day of caring.
Another one was a great success, I found him by the side of the street, fallen out of one of the numerous nests under roofs high above. Fully feathered, he was probably a bit stunned from the fall. After a couple of days resting and feeding, I took him into the countryside and put him on my hand. Seconds later he zoomed off and I watched him dipping and diving over the fields. What a success!
A long time ago when we were living in Wellington, we were walking in one of the city cemeteries and came upon a lovely lone cat. We took her home and to the vet who declared her pregnant; we named her Gipsy
and about six weeks later she had four kittens in the bedroom cupboard. When we went to Tokyo, she took up residence at Beth’s parents’ home, living a good long life.