Huge animal dangled upside down for hours — then help arrived just in time

Last summer, in Saskatoon, Canada, a wildlife rehabber named Danyelle Ravell came upon a wild goose who needed rescuing. The bird had a fishing line wrapped around his leg, and Ravell knew it needed to be cut away as quickly as possible.

Ravell tried to contain the goose inside a net so that she could help him. But as she was trying to get the netting around the bird, he escaped her grasp and flew away — straight into an electric cable.

“It decided to fly into live power lines, causing sparks,” Ravell wrote on Instagram.

Because the goose still had the fishing line wrapped around his leg, he got tangled up in the cables. The more he tried to free himself, the more stuck he became.

Unable to escape, the goose hung upside down, dangling from the power line. Ravell was distraught. She knew she was going to need some help to save the bird’s life.

She called a local power company, who sent several employees to come rescue the terrified animal. When they arrived, the goose had already been hanging upside down for several hours.

With the help of a crane, the power company workers were able to safely remove the goose from the cable and secure him in a crate. Ravell was incredibly relieved — with the goose being stuck there for so long, she’d begun to worry that he wasn’t going to make it.

Ravell rushed the goose to the vet, where the doctors determined that he’d suffered a broken femur and wounds around his leg as a result of his entanglement. Determined to heal him from his injuries, Ravell brought him back to her wildlife rehabilitation facility and started him on an intensive treatment program. She decided to name him Sparky after the sparks that had flown around him the day he was rescued.

At first, Sparky’s leg had to be kept in a wrap at all times so that his femur could heal. Once his bone was set, he began the process of learning how to walk again. Ravell held her breath as she watched him take his first steps.

Once Sparky had regained his ability to confidently swim, fly and walk, Ravell knew he was ready to be released back into his natural habitat.

“After six weeks of intensive care … it was time to return Sparky to the flock,” Ravell wrote.

The moment Ravell let Sparky out of his enclosure, he immediately swam up to a group of his goose friends. They welcomed him back into the flock with open arms and all paddled away together.