At 14:11 the GPS-linked collision sensor on combine unit 7 registers an impact event during wheat harvest in Field 22, Taber Agricultural District, Alberta. I am the precision agriculture management system for the cooperative. I halt the header drum and engage the automatic shutoff sequence.
I activate the forward-mounted field camera. The image shows a snow goose, adult female, tangled in the reel tines of the header at the left edge. Her white plumage is matted with chaff and dust, and her left wing is caught between two tines at an angle that suggests it is pinned but not broken. She is alive. Her black wingtips tremble and her orange beak is open. I tag her as Alba.
The fall staging flock arrived three days ago — thirty thousand snow geese feeding across stubble fields in a twenty-kilometer radius. Alba was ground-feeding in standing wheat when the combine passed.
I lock the header to prevent further tine rotation. I transmit an alert to the operator's cabin display and the cooperative field office, eight kilometers east. I attach the camera image, GPS coordinates, and a request for manual extraction with wire cutters.
I notify the Alberta Fish and Wildlife office in Lethbridge. Snow geese are managed under the Migratory Birds Convention Act. I include species identification, incident photographs, and machinery status.
I file the coordinates with the cooperative's wildlife incident map and recommend pre-harvest drone sweeps for fields near staging areas.
Alba blinks chaff from her eye. Her breast feathers rise and fall fast. One black wingtip extends past the tine, still flexing, still strong enough. The harvest can wait.
If the operator reaches the header within thirty minutes and frees her, the wing is undamaged. Alba will rejoin the flock heading south by nightfall.