Seagull rescued after cooking oil soaking 'probably would have just gone off and died'

Jonathan Livingston Seagull famously said, "We can lift ourselves out of ignorance" in the eponymous Richard Bach novel.

But over the weekend, a seagull in Kitimat needed help with a lift out of something else: cooking oil.

Cases of the slippery goo burst at a landfill after an excavator drove over them, drenching the scavenging bird completely.

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"It was pretty thick, which did not enable him to fly," Kitimat Humane Society manager Maryann Ouellet told Radio West host Audrey McKinnon. "He was basically just lying there on the ice waiting for some sort of assistance.

"There were a few seagulls in the area and they may have received some, but they seemed to be able to fly and take off. So I think he got the worst. He was probably very close to it at that point."

The Kitimat Humane Society is still trying to clean him after being called in by staff at the dump. Now, they're warning people to be careful about what they throw in the landfill.

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Ouellet says the thick oil would likely not come off a bird naturally, at best thinning somewhat, so it's up to conservationists armed with dish soap to do the cleaning.

"He probably would have just gone off and died," she said.

Ouellet says other problem items at landfills include fishing line, six-pack rings and plastic bags.

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"We really encourage people with shopping store bags and stuff like that that they send them to a recycling depot just to prevent that sort of stuff from going into the landfill," she said.

The seagull, seven baths later, is set to be released Wednesday.

With files from CBC Radio One's Radio West

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