06/12/2025
It’s 3 am- my mind is still racing from the chaos of the day. I cant sleep until I say thank you again to everyone!! What started as another day of my small group of amazing rescue volunteers with a few totes going out to save a small number of turtles from excavation turned into something so much bigger than we could handle on our own and FAST!
As the retention ponds drained, they revealed hundreds of goldfish. We began filling buckets and catching them as quickly as we could while sending out an urgent SOS to our friends at Carolina Waterfowl Rescue. They jumped into help and had reinforcements to us in record time!
We had little access to water, as it was being pumped out and had to be collected by dredging through deep mud in the remaining adjoining pond and we needed it FAST! The more shallow the ponds became- the warmer the water was getting. The fish needed cool non-chlorinated water. We had not nearly enough buckets, and no way to get these fish to a safe place. We had no idea they were there until it was an urgent all hands situation!
I dont know everyone’s names, there was no time for niceties- it was a grab it and go, do whatever you can moment. I don’t know these heros that showed up, but i know their hearts and i am so grateful that people like them exist in this world!
We had volunteers show up bringing cool safe water, volunteers show up to transport fish back to the emergency pond being filled at CWR, volunteers bringing totes, volunteers knee deep in mud with nets catching fish and wading through the mud to try to find the turtles before the digging is set to begin.
So thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone! We saved close to 200 gold fish, countless tadpoles, crawdads, and 6 turtles from the mud today because of you!
