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Aarti Kapur
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, February 7
Prince Mehra’s passion for birds turned into social service six years ago when he launched the “first bird ambulance of the country” for these speechless creatures. Mehra, a signboard painter, started the ambulance service to provide medical care to injured birds and also to dispose of carcasses of birds found dead on the roadside.
To popularise his mission, he moves around the city on his modified bicycle, which has a hand hand-made medicine box and his contact number on it. “I spend 20 per cent of my monthly earnings on the ambulance and the printing material which I distribute among residents,” says Mehra.
He often receives calls from residents informing him about injured birds. However, the bird lover does not solely depend on these calls, but himself moves around the city on his bicycle to find out if any bird is lying injured on the road so that he can provide medication.
“My speechless friends also deserve a dignified burial. I bury their carcasses by digging pits on the roadside where these are found dead,” says Mehra, who has disposed of the carcasses of around 352 birds in the city in the past six years.
“I dispose of the carcasses in a proper manner for human safety as the dead birds could become the cause of an epidemic in the city,” says Mehra.
On what motivated him to start this service for these beautiful creatures, he says in 2011, during a visit to Ferozpur, he saw a sweeper throwing the carcasses of two pigeons, which had died due to a short circuit, into the dustbin. He took out both carcasses and buried these in a nearby pit.
After this incident, he decided to start this campaign in the City Beautiful to ask residents to be more sensitive to birds.
Two years ago, Mehra started receiving a large number of calls of bird deaths due to thirst after which he started distributing earthen pots among roadside vendors and requested them to fill these with water every day for the birds.
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