While many people were tucking into their Christmas Day dinner WRAS volunteer rescuers Trevor Weeks and Kathy Martyn were responding to a call-out by Sussex Police. The call was to a goose found wandering around South Road in Hailsham at about 12.30pm.

WRAS's Veterinary Ambulance was on-site within 20 minutes of receiving the call from the Police. On arrival Trevor and Kathy started checking gardens and the local area looking for the bird when a lady pulled up in a car and asked if we were looking for a duck which she had found a few minutes before wandering up the road. The duck was a Muscovy duck which is not wild but possibly an escaped pet.

The duck was checked over at the road side and then taken to the Kit Wilson Trust at Hadlow Down who very kindly agreed to home the duck.

After returning home for dinner Trevor was called out again to a hedgehog at Eastbourne at about 6pm caught in the netting of a cricket batting tunnel in a school field of Park Lane. The hedgehog was cut free by a local resident whose dog had found the entangled animal.

Trevor and Kathy checked the hedgehog over for possible ligature wounds but luckily the netting was not tightly wrapped around any limbs. A few final pieces of netting were removed and the hedgehog was given a clean bill of health. Kathy took the hedgehog back across the field to be released close to where it was found. Trevor checked out the netting and was horrified by the amount of netting lying on the ground at three locations in the same field.

Trevor will be writing to all schools in East Sussex to ask them to remove netting during school holidays and to remove discarded netting in order to prevent any animals from getting caught.

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Press Contact: Trevor Weeks, East Sussex WRAS, 07931 523958 (private)

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