Workers at a wastewater plant found a badger in a "smelly situation."
The animal was stuck on a ledge after falling into a raw sewage tank in Neston. Workers at the site reported it to the RSPCA on Tuesday, November 21. The adult badger had dropped about 1.8 metres into the tank but fortunately landed on a narrow concrete ledge instead of going into the water.
It took RSPCA rescuers Naomi Norris and Katie Glenn over an hour to rescue and pull him to safety. He was mainly unharmed – apart from a couple of scratches on his nose – and was later released back into the wild.
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Inspector Norris said: "There are lots of tanks and unfortunately this particular badger had picked one that contained raw sewage. He was lucky to land on the ledge as the surrounding water is about 20-feet deep.
"Although badgers can swim and he might have been able to clamber out, it would have been a pretty unpleasant experience for him. He ran around the edge of the tank for about an hour before we were finally able to catch him using a grasper and a net to support his weight as we pulled him up.
"We don’t know how long he’d been down there but the most likely explanation is that he fell in overnight. He was a little damp, either from the morning dew or the overspill that was coming over the ledge, but he certainly wasn’t as wet or as smelly as he might have been. Hopefully he’ll give this location a wider berth in future."
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