A flock of seagulls rescued from a vat of tofu waste last week are on the mend thanks to some dish soap and a little elbow grease.
Staff and volunteers at the Wildlife Rescue Association of BC are hard at work cleaning the oily, fibrous soybean residue from the birds' feathers using the same methods they would following an oil spill.
Initially staff tried letting the gulls preen themselves clean of the muck but it proved to be much more tenacious a mess than they had hoped.
On Tuesday, staff and volunteers at the association's facility began washing the seagulls with Dawn dish soap and have cleaned 19 of the birds so far. The clean-up is expected to last through the end of the week, not counting the time it takes the gulls to groom themselves after.
On March 11, workers at the Superior Tofu processing facility in East Vancouver found 62 of the birds trapped in a vat containing soybean pulp. The vat was covered in a grate the week before to prevent theft of the pulp, which a local farmer purchases for cow feed. The grate was large enough to allow for the birds to get in, but too small to allow them to fly out again.
A tarpaulin has been temporarily installed to prevent further wildlife incursions while Wildlife Rescue Association staff work with the tofu processor on a more permanent solution.
Yolanda Brooks, communications manager at the Wildlife Rescue Association, explained the soybean residue disrupts the feathers' natural waterproofing, leaving the gulls unable to fly or regulate their body temperature.
"If it rained they would get completely waterlogged, and if they're on water they can drown," said Brooks. "Even if they're on land they can get too cold and die of hypothermia."
Brooks said the operation is the biggest the association has done except for after actual oil spills. She said the association deals with animals that need cleaning throughout the year, but rarely in such large numbers.
"We'll get an owl that got into an open container of used vegetable oil outside a restaurant or a crow [that] gets into something at the PNE, or bats [that] get stuck on sticky traps," Brooks said. "We get them from time to time, but usually it's one or two birds."
Though the group's wildlife hospital is brimming with seagulls and personnel right now, she said it's fortunate this happened now rather than in three or four weeks.
"Luckily for us baby bird season hasn't started, so we don’t have pens that are full of ducklings or full of goslings and we're not feeding nestling birds every 15 minutes," said Brooks. "If that was the case, things would be a lot more tricky."
For all their trouble, Brooks says the gulls appear to be doing well, although a few did develop eye infections from the soybean residue and one suffered a fracture to the leg or pelvis.
"So far the ones that have been through the wash and [have] been dried... they're now outside in the pool," said Brooks. "They're all preening like mad and they seem much more content with life at the moment."
