Snakes, foxes and chinchillas: all of the animals that ENPA has rescued in Milan

Also in the year that has just finished, ENPA, the National Organisation for the Protection of Animals, in Milan, left its mark, by rescuing no fewer than 2559 animals in difficulty, throughout Milan and its Province.

This success was also achieved thanks to 1766 people, those who went to the premises in Via Gassendi to deliver, in person, an animal they had found, that was wounded or in difficulty, to our operators.

In 2017, the operators of ENPA Milano were able to deal with 554 requests for direct intervention, with their vehicles, which are equipped to provide assistance, very often in collaboration with the fire brigade.

This collaboration has become stronger recently, considering how difficult it has been to “reach” some animals in the situations they ended up in.

One example is the case of a fox that got stuck in a crack that formed along the banks of the Naviglio Martesana Canal; the rescue involved experts from the fire brigade’s diving team. Another is that of a swallow that was left dangling from a height of 15 metres, for which firemen belonging to the potholing team had to intervene.

On reading the long list of animals that were helped in 2017, we can see 6 foxes and 252 swifts, these numbers are far greater than the individual episodes that were reported, because they were unusual. Looking at the species in the long list, we see a great many other rescues, from that of an albino boa, which was wandering around a garden of a block of flats in Via Vergiate, which was helped, caught and returned to its owner, to that of the royal python, which had fallen from the fourth floor of a building in Via Abruzzi, which was miraculously rescued and returned to its owner. And then there was a king snake, which had been seen for a fortnight, wandering around a block of flats in Via Ingegnoli, which nobody had been able to catch.

Fortunately, each of these episodes ended happily for the animals, as their escapes had been “accidental”, the result of their owners being distracted.

For many of the animals rescued, and some that had already been with the organisation for some time, the ENPA Milano operators were able to arrange a suitable adoption; this was true for 32 cats, 15 parrots, 4 snakes (including 3 royal pythons), 1 chinchilla, 1 gerbil and many others.

Even one of the now “famous” peregrine falcons of the Pirellone was among the animals rescued in 2017, as was a European honey buzzard that, in May, had literally smashed into the window on a balcony on the eighth floor of a building in Piazza in Bacone, in Milan.

“In Milan, when you talk about ‘animal rescue’, the first organisation that comes to mind to the vast majority of people is ENPA, which is the most important organisation in the area, which has done this work for several years now,” the Chairman of ENPA Milano, Ermanno Giudici, said.

“We could continue to fill pages and pages with these stories, because our association has become a very important reference point for animal rescue requests. But we must point out that ours is an association of only volunteers, a non-profit organisation, not an institute or a state-funded organisation, although our name can be misleading.

For this reason, all of these episodes and the numbers that make up a year of work, must make us reflect even more and help us to understand the great deal that we manage to do. With the number of requests always on the increase, thanks to the public’s growing sensitivity.

Also in 2017, in addition to the work of assisting animals that were injured or in difficulty, carried out by our operators and our vets, there were checks made by our volunteer Animal Guards on reports of presumed maltreatment by people.

Numerous interventions were carried out in Milan the its Province, and following three of these checks, the Animal Guards seized three dogs, and charged their owners with maltreatment, in accordance with Article 544c of the penal code.

A fourth animal was seized, again by ENPA Animal Guards in Milan, and a charge was filed against unknown persons, following the discovery of an African grey parrot (psittacus erithacus), a species that was recently added to the maximum protection appendix of the Washington Convention.