RSPCA officers spent two hours trying to corner, confine and rescue a feisty fox with a plastic bottle stuck on his head.
Animal collection officers Adam McConkey and Victoria Hurr were called to Grove School in Dawson Road, Birmingham, on Wednesday (12 February) after families spotted the frightened fox in a bit of a pickle.
Victoria said: “The large 2litre bottle was missing the narrow neck so the fox had managed to push his head inside the cavity and got it stuck. Goodness knows how long he’d been like that but if he hadn’t have been spotted he would have died from dehydration and starvation, or could have even been hit and killed by a vehicle.
“He was very distressed and confused but still gave us the run-around! It took us two hours before we were able to get him out from underneath a cabin, corner him and get him onto a grasper so we could safely remove the bottle.
“Thankfully, he wasn’t injured so we released him there and then and he scarpered happily off into the undergrowth.”
The RSPCA is called to around 5,000 incidents every year regarding animals and litter – with hundreds of incidents of animals caught up in plastic litter.
Adam said: “We’ve seen a huge rise in the number of incidents of wild animals being injured or trapped due to plastic litter.
“We see seals with plastic stuck around their necks causing deep lacerations and wounds; we see wildlife with plastic and glass jars stuck over their heads or plastic taping wrapped around their bodies; we see birds with plastic fishing wire wrapped around their legs cutting off the blood circulation.
“It’s so important to cut down on the amount of plastic waste we’re using and to ensure our litter is properly disposed of so animals don’t pay the price for our waste.”
