Goose Makes A Full Recovery

On June 1, a Canada Goose Gosling was brought to the PAWS Wildlife Center with an unusual injury.  The young bird had somehow impaled himself on a piece of chain-link fencing and the fence had to be cut to free him. The portion of the fence that had impaled him was still sticking out of his body just behind his right wing.

 

We took radiographs of the gosling to get a better look at the size and shape of the foreign object that was penetrating his body. As you can see in the photo of the radiograph below, it was fairly large and well-embedded.

 
We anesthetized the bird and PAWS Wildlife Veterinarian Dr. John Huckabee carefully removed the piece of fencing and then cleaned and dressed the wound.

 
The gosling had a pronounced limp for several weeks after the impalement wound had healed. There had been some muscle and tissue damage that needed time to resolve. During almost two months of care, the goose grew into a beautiful sub-adult bird, and he retained only a barely noticeable hitch in his walk from his injury. I released the goose on July 30 with three other geese who had received care at PAWS. The photo below shows him making his return to the wild.