I have no idea what I said at the beginning of the video, lol. But just thought I'd share this moment from ages long past where a dragonfly got stuck in the bird netting around our porch (which was to keep our cats from escaping when we'd occasionally let them out for some fresh air). I zoomed in with post-editing so y'all could better see this big beautiful bug fly for a bit, before landing in the grass to recuperate. Mission successful! ^_^
A few months earlier, a garter snake had gotten caught in some other bird netting Mom had placed over her plants to keep the deer from eating them. The poor snake was REALLY tangled, and I COULD have recorded us saving it, but we were more concerned with hurrying up and releasing them since their neck was partially constricted. I'd say it took me and Mom around 12 minutes to free the poor thing. It would've been a great video, but yeah, their life was more important than internet clicks, and we couldn't afford having one less free hand to work with.
(Even though it helps snakes on the whole to be less vilified when they can be viewed through the lens of empathy, as well as teaching a valuable lesson about being mindful of how harmful human activity can be to wild animals.)
That little trooper only tried to bite me once while we worked around their head, where some of the netting was digging in (and a segment was clamped inside the poor little one's mouth). Absolutely no blaming them for that, it hurt and they were scared. :( But they easily could have been MUCH more aggressive, even if they were already exhausted.
But amazingly, after a bit, it seemed like perhaps they realized we were the ones slowly getting the netting off of their body, so they struggled far less, trusting us just enough to rest a little bit, even turning their neck and watching us work with the nearest eye. Until they thought they were free at one point, then they burst into motion, hoping to make a getaway. But upon realizing they were still tangled, after a bit of fruitless wiggling, they relaxed again and cooperated until they were free to go.
Whereupon they scrambled back into the shelter of the low-lying plants in the flower bed. Except they stopped only a little ways in and gazed back at us while we cleaned up the area. They watched us for around two minutes, longer than the worry that we were pursuing them would've warranted. Maybe a bit of fascination with how these strange big things with multiple small-snakes on their limbs had handled them, relieved their pain, then let them go? Trying to process what they'd just been through and what the heck our nature was? Who knows.
(Similarly another time longer back, I'd spotted a box tortoise on the road and pulled over, picking him up and carrying him to the side of the road he was facing [That's to make sure they don't re-cross the road if it remains between them and their destination]. Instead of hiding in his shell like many others I'd road-rescued, terrified of the sudden movement... instead, this fellow stuck his limbs and neck way out, staring down at the ground he was leaving behind, his jaw slightly agape. Then after I set him safely in the grass, he actively turned and looked up at me, eyes wide, just staring at me with almost readable shock and awe! Of course that could be anthropomorphizing, but it was just SUCH an intense look for a usually stone-faced reptile, combined with his body language, and the way his fascination overrode a more logical fear response, that it was almost impossible for me NOT to read into it, lol! Even when I got back to my car and looked back at him, he was STILL staring after me as I drove away. X3 But I digress.)
Then, the little (well, around 3 feet long so pretty big for the ones around here) garter snake finally slithered back further into shelter to recuperate from their ordeal. I really hope the lactic acid buildup (a side-effect of stress in cold-blooded animals who have less oxygenated blood) wasn't too much for them to get through. Though Mom said she saw a garter snake that looked exactly that one's size, with the same markings, in the same flower bed two weeks later. Really hoping that was our champ having pulled through~!
After both of those events, Mom removed the bird netting from both areas respectively, shredding it into little chunks, then bundling it up tightly, in order to dispose of it in such a way that it's less likely to entangle any other creatures. We learned our lesson.