Their journey is un-beak-lievable.
More than a dozen malnourished toucans — some with broken tails and legs — have gotten their bright colors back nearly a year after being rescued from an inhumane Mexico-US trafficking ring.
The 14 baby keel-billed toucans have spent the past eight months being nursed back to health at the Bronx Zoo and are finally strong enough to fly on their own two wings, the staff announced Thursday.
“These toucans arrived in a severely compromised state after enduring stressful and inhumane conditions during illegal transport,” Chuck Cerbini, the curator of ornithology at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo, said in a statement.
“Thanks to the dedication of our animal care and veterinary teams, we were able to stabilize and rehabilitate them.”
The feathered creatures were rushed to the zoo in July after federal authorities discovered them cruelly stashed inside the dashboard of a car trying to cross the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in California.
The birds — which were all three to four months old at the time — had been sedated, wrapped in cloth and duct taped to the underside of the dashboard, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California said.
All of the toucans were described as being in “extremely poor condition,” suffering from malnutrition and some with broken tails and legs.
Carlos Abundez, 35, of California, was arrested for smuggling the exotic birds, which are listed as being “near threatened” have a retail value of $5,000 each on the black market.
It took several months to rehabilitate the 10 males and four females in the flock as part of a coordinated effort between the Bronx Zoo’s Ornithology and Zoological Health Departments, but now the birds are ready to fly the coop.
Most of them have already been re-homed to other zoos across the county — but four will stay in The Bronx for New Yorkers to visit.
Visitors can see two of the males — both of whom recovered from broken legs — at the “World of Birds” exhibit, while a male-female couple will be kept away from the crowds as a future breeding pair.
The long-nosed birds are just the latest that have been recently rehabilitated at the Bronx Zoo, and their stay overlapped with a sly red fox that slinked onto a US-bound cargo ship out of England in February.
The clever stowaway somehow survived the 14-day journey largely undetected, but was wrangled at the Port of New York and New Jersey and hauled to the Boogie Down for health screenings.
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