POLLUTED WATERS

​On June 30, 2019, I took a walk near the water’s edge along Lake Whitehall, in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, with my husband and two of our dogs, Vienna and Hana. As the dogs ran into some bushes near the water, we heard rustling and then the loud screaming of a bird. 

We walked closer to see if the dogs had injured the bird or if it was able to escape them unscathed. As we came closer, we could see that a blue heron was motionless in the bushes. The majestic bird was completely tangled in fishing line. 

​The line was wrapped around its body, leg and wings, as well as some of the bushes around the heron. As I quietly talked to the heron and tried to reassure it that we were going to help, I carefully grabbed the bird around its body with one hand and held the beak with the other. My husband broke some of the bushes in which the line was tangled. Having no knife or keys to use to cut the line, my husband was able cut the fishing line using his teeth. 

We then unwrapped the line from the heron’s wing, body and leg, and I gently placed it in the water. ​It was clearly exhausted from trying to get free; who knows how long it had been struggling. Above you can see the Blue Heron's legs  still wrapped with the fishing line. We had already released some of the line that had bound it to a small tree which was still wrapped around leg and body. 

Here is the bird released and exhausted, but thank goodness not dead from starvation or injury.

​Lessons learned: So much fishing line and plastic is thrown away or discarded improperly, so that nature can become entangled and suffer and ultimately die. Our waterways and our oceans are so polluted with garbage and plastic. We are poisoning our planet and killing our wildlife.

​On our last trip to Maui, Hawaii, we took a walk off the groomed beaches and this is what found was being washed in. Our oceans are filled with plastic residue, which is washing up onto our shores. The animals are ingesting the plastic as well as the petroleum toxins associated with those products and chemicals. Dire predictions suggest that by 2046 there will be no more edible fish in the oceans and what will be there will be so toxic.

​When you see (or read about) one bird suffering and trying to free itself, think about the millions of birds we slaughter in the U.S. every year and the suffering that they go through. The difference we cannot think about is one is food, and one is a majestic blue heron. Each bird wants to live and survive and not become food for us. Try to bring to people the awareness about our footprint on the earth and what we are doing to cause such damage. We need to stop animal agriculture as it is one of the most polluting aspect of climate change and causes more CO2, methane and feces disposal problems. It is time to have our palates dictate an end to climate change by eating organic and more plants and plant- based products.