How the Volynians saved the stork

Volyn oblast – Thanks to an ubiquitous Internet, this story is already known throughout Ukraine. In the tract of Venske, the gateway to the Shatsk lake district, a stork nest fell from a defunct old water tower. A local resident reported the incident to the 101 service [Ukraine’s 9-1-1. – Ed.], as the stork could not get out of the tower on his own because he could not spread his wings inside the confined space. Local rescuers promptly reacted to the alarm and delivered the stork from captivity. Deputy Head of the State Ecological Inspectorate in Volyn oblast Oleksandr Tkachuk says the stork still has enough time to build a new home and have offspring, because the mating season of these amazing birds will start no sooner than in two weeks.

The white stork is no rarity in Volynia. Indeed, it is practically native for the region, with a stork in almost every village. Even in the village of Zviriv, which lies on the route from Lutsk to Kyiv, almost every roadside post houses a stork nest.

However, most Volynians do not call this bird a “stork” (leleka in Ukrainian), but rather a buzko, busol, botsiun or chornohuz. The Chornohuzka River is even called the Busol by many villagers from the Manevychi district. The stork represents happiness and fertility. It stands to reason that Volynians say “the buzko brings children,” as it is one of Ukraine’s few regions with a growing birthrate. The owners of houses next to which storks settle protect the birds, which are said to bring happiness and wealth to their homes.

Several years ago, Volynians tried to introduce neighboring Poland’s practice of keeping proper records of the animals and protecting them on a national level. In Ukraine and Poland alike, storks often place their nests on pylons. As a result, they often die of electrocution or shortcut electricity cables. The Bocian (Stork) project was introduced in Poland in a time of economic crisis, when beggars roamed the Polish streets and everyone was struggling to survive. However, Polish society supported the conservationists’ idea to place artificial stork nests on pylons. While in Poland stork nests were repaired by local governments, in Volynia it was done at the expense of the energy industry. With the onset of the crisis this practice has become impossible to continue.

The case of rescuing the Venske stork is not the first of its kind in Volynia. In 2005, a similar situation occurred in the Volodymyr-Volynsky boarding school for orphans. There was also an old water tower, which for many years housed a pair of storks. But once the storks started to fight each other and fell down into the tower. Residents of nearby houses noticed the incident and reported it to the local firefighters who managed to go deep inside the tower’s shaft and released the two storks. However, the stork from Shatsk proved harder to rescue. Deputy Head of the Emergencies Ministry Department in Volyn oblast Volodymyr Nesterov says the water tower in the tract, where a major wood-working enterprise operated in the Soviet times, is already 40 years old, and for 30 years it has housed storks. The bird fell to the bottom of the tower, which is 10 meters deep. To rescue him, the servicemen cut holes at the bottom of the tower with special instruments, and the 11th independent state firefighting brigade commander, Lieutenant Hennadii Kravchuk climbed down to get the bird. Last year, the department’s employees recall, the Volynian rescuers had to save a swan that had swallowed a fish hook.

Obsessed with material values in recent decades, mankind is now more than ever in need of such strong and moving stories about the mutual support between humans and animals. The whole world wept at the sight of Japanese dogs and cats stoically overcoming the loss of their masters, while the Japanese themselves are exceptionally responsible towards those bereaved animals. Such relationships will help us overcome any difficulties.