Season of Giving

In this season of giving, we wanted to share a couple of stories of people helping animals and giving back to the earth. 

Above is a video of a trumpeter swan rescue in central Minnesota.  A broken wing stranded the juvenile swan in the freezing lake.  One of the rescuers is our friend  Charles Miller, PhD, webmaster extraordinaire and creator of jimbrandenburg.com.  Click on the image above to view video of the rescue.

One of the divers on the rescue team works on the crab pot lines that held the female humpback whale 

near the Farallon Islands. Marine Mammal Center photo via Associated Press

Credit: Marine Mammal Center

This next story first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle a few years ago, a female humpback whale had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines. She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso and a line tugging in her mouth.

A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farallon Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her. They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her.

When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed them gently around as she was thanking them.

Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth said her eyes were following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.

May you, and all those you love, be so blessed and fortunate to be surrounded by people who will help you get untangled from the things that are binding you. And, may you always know the joy of giving and receiving gratitude.