A White Stork – similar to Menes. Photograph from the Wikimedia Commons, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
A stork accused of being a duck and framed for espionage and arrested in Egypt has ended up as a meal for an Egyptian family.
On August 31, news broke that Egypt had arrested a spy duck, with a suspicious gadget attached to its feathers. Later, it emerged that the duck was a stork, which was named Menes, and that the tracking device on it was for a study.
On September 4, Mostafa Hussein announced that the “wrongly accused stork is free”:
Wrongly accused Stork is free. http://t.co/dLQ2b2gHuM /via @zeinobia #egypt #spyduck pic.twitter.com/UcjDUaYpIO
— Mostafa Hussein (@moftasa) September 4, 2013
The euphoria was short-lived.
Egyptian blogger Zeinobia now reports:
I do not know if it is fate or what, but it seems that the story of Menes in the land of the Nile is extremely sad story.
After it was accused of espionage and spent a day in Egyptian detention , he was released in to a protectorate to fly free only to meet its end !! He was hunted down and eaten by an Egyptian Nubian family in the south !!!
On Facebook, the Nature Conservation Society of Egypt added:
Sad news: Menes the White Stork has been killed.
After being safely released into the Salugah & Ghazal protected area several days ago, Menes flew off to a nearby Nile Island, where he was captured and killed, to be eaten by local villagers.
The post explains:
Storks have been part of the Nubian diet for thousands of years, so the actual act of eating storks is not in itself a unique practice. However, the short-lived success story of getting Menes released, was not enough to keep him safe till he exited Egypt.
And the issue is bigger – and more complicated:
Egypt has long suffered from issues of uncontrolled hunting. However, it is important to always balance the needs of local communities with the needs of nature and biodiversity conversation.
The post concludes:
The entire region has a very long way to go, specially in the field of raising awareness on hunting and migratory birds.
