Pets Vets Corner

Teenagers are well known for their youthful exhuberance and experimentation. Unfortunately these ‘experiments’ are also known to occasionally go a little too far… This was certainly the case for little Hiccup, the teenage amputee duckling who has been hand raised from when he was only one day old.

This particular morning Hiccup had eyed up a very large snail and without knowing that he needed to break the shell first, he attempted to swallow the entire snail in one gulp.

With the snail being about four times the size of the duck’s throat, there was no way that this was ever going to be a good idea. Predictably the snail got stuck.

Poor Hiccup was in distress when he was presented to our Wellsford branch. He could breathe but he was very uncomfortable, shaking his head and attempting to quack but no sound was coming out!

Quick action was required and with a small amount of pressure applied in the right places the snail popped up into Hiccups mouth and was extracted. Afterwards Hiccup seemed nonplussed about the whole event and was ready and eager to eat the snail all over again!

Hiccup will be released into a safe environment soon and hopefully the other ducks will take him under their wings and teach him how to eat snails safely. Monday