Unfortunately over the past week the world has been hit by a couple of major oil spills. One in San Francisco Bay which dumped 58,000 gallons all over the coast. The other in the Kerch Straits of Russia which sent 360,000 gallons into the water. In both cases thousands of animals were affected and volunteers from all over the world showed up to help save those that were still alive and covered in the thick black sludge. How exactly do they do they get them clean?
Before anything can be done the birds have to be fed and calmed so that they can survive the cleaning process. As you can imagine being covered in oil isn’t anything to write home about and many animals die from exhaustion due to non-stop attempts to clean themselves. Once the animals have gained some of their strength back they are given a bath. Not just any bath, using a mixture of Pedialyte and Dawn soap the birds are immersed in water and scrubbed down. Every time the water becomes too muddy to do any good, the birds are moved to a second tub and so on and so on. It’s not uncommon for as many as 15 tubs to be used for just one bird each set to match the birds body temp which is about 103 degrees. Tooth brushes, waterpiks, Q-tips are all used to help clean those hard to reach and sensitive animal parts. 10 days later if the bird has survived the traumatic experience (the survival rate is only around 25%) they are set free. With oil spills occurring every couple of months somewhere around the world Proctor and Gamble have thankfully made donating bottles of Dawn one of their top priorities.
Buy Repell-em Garbage Bags and keep the animals away!
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