Loon rescued from frozen lake on the mend

ROSEVILLE -- The Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Roseville treats more than 8,000 animals a year. Right now they have swans, ducks, a snake, a turtle, and a loon (to mention a few). How that loon got there is currently the talk around the center's water cooler.

"It ranks right up there. He's pretty lucky, it is pretty amazing," Center Director Phil Jenni said as he glanced down at the calm, 8 pound loon resting in a pool below him.

"Nothing short of a hurricane was going to stop me from saving that loon," Jane Freeman said. Freeman lives on Movil Lake just north of Bemidji. Last Thursday, around noon, she noticed the loon was stuck, frozen in the lake with ice up to its neck.

"When the migration occurred they were left behind. The sibling of this one was actually frozen into the ice and killed by eagles; this one, they got to it at the last second," Jenni explained.

Back to Bemidji, Freeman decided she was going in after the bird. Her husband Andy said "no way," so he put on waders and walked into the lake, which came up to his chest by the time he got to the bird. Andy had a hammer with him, so he started pounding on the ice. "Hammered it (the loon) out and we netted it so it didn't get away," his wife recalled.

Meanwhile, Phil Jenni was down in Roseville, working the phones. He booked the bird on the last flight out of Bemidji. By 7 p.m. that night, vets at the Rehab Center were looking over the bird. He had some frostbite on his feet and he also had an elevated white blood cell count. Doctors are still trying to figure out why he never made the trek South.

Freeman said she was just glad she got to him in time. "He never tried to peck at us or anything. I think he knew we were trying to help him," she concluded.

Jenni says they hope to release the loon in a week or two. They plan on taking it to a lake much further to the south.

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