Scientists heard a knock at the door. It was a pelican in need of help.

A team at a NOAA research facility in Panama City, Florida, treated a brown pelican after it arrived at their back door. On Sept. 8, a biologist found the bird standing on the stoop and pecking at the glass, with fishing line wrapped around its right wing and a double-barbed treble hook embedded, restricting its ability to fly. Cactus spines—about a dozen—were also lodged in its left foot. University of Miami research associate Annsli Hilton led the removal, cutting the line and snapping the hook with wire cutters, then extracting both the hook fragment from bone with forceps and the spines. The pelican recovered, flew away from the basin, and was expected to have otherwise starved or been eaten by a predator.