Reynoldsburg OH Real Estate

The Columbus Dispatch

Friday January 27, 2012 5:50 AM

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Eric Albrecht | Dispatch

Lisa Fosco of the Ohio Wildlife Center watches over a duck whose beak was damaged by a zip tie.

Gayl Weiser said she couldn’t believe
her eyes when she saw the emaciated mallard pacing in the parking lot of the Reynoldsburg Home
Depot.

A zip tie was clamped tightly around the duck’s orange beak and had become imbedded.

“I could tell he was in bad shape,” said Weiser, 57, of Pickerington, who works at the store. “
He kind of looked at me like he wanted help.”

It took four others to help her capture the duck and clip off the zip tie on Jan. 10. Then
Weiser drove him to the Ohio Wildlife Center’s hospital for injured wildlife on Billingsley Road in
Columbus.

The duck is still recuperating at the Wildlife Center. He now weighs more than seven times what
he did when he arrived, and his beak is healing nicely, according to staff members there.

Dr. Donald L. Burton, the center’s founder and director, said there’s no way to know how long
the zip tie was on the duck’s beak. But one thing is clear: Someone did it on purpose.

“It’s the cruelty and persecution of wildlife, is what it is,” Burton said. “I am not able to
rationalize that kind of attitude toward wildlife.”

Neither is Weiser.

“They said he was so close to death,” she said. “How could anybody do that?”

Burton said the duck’s prognosis is good and it should be released when it gets warmer.

Burton said that several times a year the center must care for wildlife that someone has injured
on purpose.

In recent years, the center has had a Cooper’s hawk whose wing had been broken with a paintball,
several ducks whose legs had been clamped together with zip ties and a raccoon that had two arrows
stuck in it.

“Unfortunately, the hardest thing about working here is that nothing surprises us,” said
hospital manager Stormy Gibson.

kgray@dispatch.com