Each year, the RSPCA works hard to ensure the safety of our pets and wildlife, responding to calls, offering advice and even attending emergencies. In 2022, the charity’s officers were called to thousands of incidents, including many in which birds, wildlife, pets and farm animals have found themselves in a somewhat sticky situation.
Luckily for them, the charity has over 400 frontline rescuers working all hours of the day and night, who have been on hand to help after receiving what we imagine would have been a rather unusual phone call.
“Erm, RSPCA, there’s a seal in the pub…”
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Dermot Murphy, RSPCA Inspectorate Commissioner from the animal charity’s frontline rescuers, said: “With our teams out rescuing animals from danger and suffering 365 days a year, we are often their only hope. It’s an honour to be able to lend a hand to animals in desperate need and we hope people enjoy seeing some of the weird and wonderful places animals have found themselves in need of our help.”
The charity has rounded up some of their top rescues of the year, from snakes on a ‘pane’ to a week-long mission to save a stuck cat. But let’s start off with the em-baa-rassing story of a Mancunian sheep, shall we?
On June 27, rescuer Helen Chapman was called to a field in Wythenshawe to reports of a sheep who needed a helping hand after getting stuck between the bars of a metal field feeding station.
The stricken ewe had initially been spotted by a walker, having got itself wedged into the bars in a bid to get some extra food.
Helen said: “This sheep appears to have been carrying a little too much weight and got wedged between the bars of the field shelter. The metal structure is designed to allow the lambs and young sheep inside to reach supplementary food while keeping the adults out. But this greedy ewe decided to push her luck and try to get the extra feed, getting her back end stuck outside the bars!”
Helen was able to unscrew a mechanism and widen the gaps to free her and she ran back to the flock.
Elsewhere across the country, there have been other wild and often unbelievable calls made to the RSPCA where animals have been in need of human assistance to get themselves out of trouble, too.
Here are some of our favourite great escapes of 2022:
A seal walks into a bar
A poorly seal pup made his way to a Bristol pub, much to the surprise of locals. The common seal pup - nicknamed Nacho - appeared at the Old Lock & Weir pub in Keynsham on January 2.
The British Divers Marine Life Rescue were called to help and, after containing Nacho, transported him to RSPCA West Hatch, in Somerset, to be checked over by the wildlife team.
Wildlife supervisor Paul Oaten said: “It’s certainly unusual for a seal to turn up at a pub like Nacho did. The River Avon runs from the coast all the way along through Keynsham where the pub is situated at the water’s edge, so it’s likely he found his way there swimming upstream from the coast.”
The six-month-old was underweight and had puncture wounds on his flippers. He had an ID tag on his flipper showing that he was taken in by the Scottish SPCA in the summer and released into the wild in November but has lost lots of weight since so was rehabilitated in RSPCA care.
Sweet escape
A man had quite the fright when a sugar glider flew into his bedroom and woke him up unexpectedly. Shocked John Zou, 27, was sleeping when he heard something scampering around his bedroom in his sixth-floor London flat at around 5am on January 10.
After locating the little creature, he shut the possum in one of his rooms to keep him safe, fed him some sugary fruit, and contacted the RSPCA for help.
John said: “I left the window open to the balcony so he must have come in from outside. I guess he’s someone’s pet and flew into my flat from theirs.”
Rescuer Francesca Tambini went to collect the little glider from Holborn and took him to an exotics sanctuary. She added: “I expect this little guy is an escaped pet or has been abandoned locally before turning up on this man’s balcony. Unfortunately, we do see these sorts of animals being abandoned from time-to-time when their owners realise how difficult it is to meet their needs in a household environment.”
DI-why?
B&Q staff had a shock when they found a fox taking a snooze in one of the aisles of their Peckham store in London. He was curled up on a doormat on one of the shelves when staff found him as they opened the store on January 22. They contacted the RSPCA as he was suffering from mange.
Rescuer Chloe Wilson attended to help, and said: “He looked very cute all curled up on a doormat down one of the shopping aisles. I think as far as he was concerned he’d found the perfect sleeping spot. However, on closer inspection the poor fox was suffering from mange, a skin disease caused by mites, so I transported him to South Essex Wildlife Hospital for care.”
That’s quackers!
The RSPCA came to the rescue of a duck who had managed to hatch her eggs on the roof of a shopping centre in Surrey. Residents overlooking the Friary Centre, Guildford, raised the alarm and called the RSPCA for help on May 18 after the eight eggs hatched into fluffy ducklings.
Inspector Andrew Kirby visited the location and commented: “Normally in the wild, once the ducklings have hatched, the mother duck will lead them to water, but of course the building’s roof was far too high up and also in the city centre which has heavy traffic - so incredibly dangerous for ducks!
“She really needed a helping hand to move from ‘the penthouse’ to a more suitable location.” He herded them from the roof inside where he caught them and carried them down to a nearby pond to set them free.
Purr-fect job
It took rescuers a whol week to reach a trapped cat who got himself stuck down a 12ft void in a care home which was ‘impossible to access’.
Visitors to the home in Norwich, Norfolk, first heard the cat’s meows on June 13 and raised the alarm.
The fire service and RSPCA came to rescue him after he pushed through a tiny gap in the ceiling of a storage room and fell into a void. Dyno-Rod used camera equipment to find him and finally RSPCA rescuers Jason Finch and Paige Burnham were able to help reach him through a hole in the floor.
Jason said: “This was the craziest, most frustrating and most rewarding rescue of a cat I have had to do in my 22-year career at the RSPCA. Thank you to everyone who was involved in the rescue - everyone just wanted to get him out and nobody was going to give up!”
The missing cat was called Nemo, and he was eventually reunited with his relieved owners.
Would you like any ssssides with that?
Fast food customers were shocked after spotting a 5ft-long snake slithering outside McDonald’s in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, on July 31. They passed the snake - thought to be an injured native adder - to the fast-food restaurant staff who contacted the RSPCA for help.
So Hannah Nixon was surprised to find a 5ft-long boa constrictor when she arrived on the scene. She said: “Based on the report that was phoned in, I was expecting an adder - which is a fairly common native British snake. But when I peeked in the box, I was confronted with a full 5ft of boa constrictor - an exotic, non-native snake and not what I was expecting at all!
“The poor animal did look like he had been in the wars a bit, with a few scratches and cuts, so he was taken to our Stubbington Ark Animal Centre in Fareham, Hampshire.”
That’s bananas
A Hispaniolan common tree frog has made a 4,300-mile journey across the Atlantic from its home in the Dominican Republic in a bunch of bananas, finding himself washed up in Staffordshire.
Rescuer Jonny Wood, who is specially trained to deal with exotics, collected the frog on September 24.
Iain Holloway and his family made the surprise discovery when they were unpacking their food shopping after a delivery at their home in Tamworth.
The tiny 1.5-inch amphibian, who is now in the care of the RSPCA, was in good condition, despite being inside the bag of bananas which would have been wrapped up for some time.
Mr Holloway said: “We were unpacking the shopping in the kitchen and my wife turned to me and said ‘look there’s a frog in the bananas’ and I said ‘sorry, there's what in the bananas?’.”
Deep doodoo
A Labrador needed help after falling into a 3m-deep sewer in his own back garden. Ollie’s owners panicked when they returned home and there was no sign of him; before they found him having fallen into a hole at their home in Holbury, Hampshire.
RSPCA rescuer Graham Hammond and Hampshire Fire & Rescue Service’s Animal Rescue Team went to help on October 3, asking neighbours not to flush their toilets to keep the dog safe.
Graham said: “Ollie got into a wee bit of trouble when he accidentally broke through a faulty sewer cover while bounding round the back garden of his owners’ home. I was really concerned that he could have seriously injured himself. It was a long drop and obviously extremely nasty down there.
“A multi-handled ground sheet was put under his belly to lift him and throughout, he remained friendly and easy to handle. This resulted in a straightforward and easy rescue, though a bit smelly!”
Thankfully he was uninjured and was returned to his owners safe and sound.
Snakes on a pane
A woman was in for a shock when she woke up to find a 3ft-long snake slithering in through her open bedroom window. The resident in Basildon, Essex, woke from a nap on October 8 and leapt out of bed, slamming the door behind her and calling the RSPCA.
Animal rescue officer Enola Evans went to the scene; she said: “It’s not every day you get woken up by a snake trying to get into your bedroom through a window - the woman was terribly shocked!”
She couldn’t initially find the snake and searched the woman’s bedroom before spotting the brightly-coloured reptile as she closed the window, coiled around the rim.
“He had been very well-hidden, so I was really pleased to find him,” she added. The snake was taken to a reptile expert nearby and the charity launched a search to find his owner.
And a lost finch in a Christmas tree
RSPCA officers came to the rescue of a little finch who moved into a Next store in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne & Wear, and took up residency among the Christmas displays.
Rescuers Rachael Hurst and Lucy Green were called after the bird flew in through an open window on November 13 and, initially, became trapped in a gap between the store’s glass frontage and an internal wall, straddling across several floors, before perching on top of a Christmas tree.
Rachael said: “She just couldn’t fly back out and was flitting around the displays over three floors. No doubt the bright decorations in the Christmas displays attracted her and at one stage she’d landed on top of a tree and seemed very happy to stay there too.
“Finally we caught her, on November 15, behind some men's coats on the top floor, but we had to move pretty swiftly. Fortunately, she was unharmed, so we took her straight outside and released her near an area where there were a couple of trees.”
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