Chilly bee, a depressed fish and a radioactive squirrel…bizarre calls to the RSPCA

EACH year, the RSPCA's call centre answers more than a million calls.  Most, it says, are to report cruelty or to ask for help and advice.  Others are more unusual.  This is a selection:
“Can you come and get a fly off a web?”
“My fish has lost its balance. It's depressed.”
A caller reported a moorhen “acting strangely”.
“I want to cancel the call...the pig has flown off.”
“Can you send an officer to bring my litter tray in?”
“There's a bee on my wall and it's too cold for it.”
“Can you come and get a spider out of my Dyson?”
“There is a frog in my pond that has swallowed a golf ball.”
“I have something in my garden, it's either a dog or a horse.”
“There's a bird sat on my wall.  It's my wall and I don't want the bird there.”
Someone rang up about a “radioactive squirrel”.  It turned out to be an albino.
“There is a rather large yellow parrot outside my home.  I think it might be a balloon.”
One caller rang to say he was dressed as a dog and his girlfriend was beating him so he wanted to log a complaint against her.
Some calls, says the RSPCA, were deceptive.  One caller reported a hedgehog trapped in a basement – in fact, it was a shoe scraper.  In another incident an inspector attended a call about an injured abandoned dog in a park.  It turned out to be broken umbrella.
An elderly lady could hear noises and believed it was a trapped animal in her loft.  The sound was a low battery warning from her smoke detector -- a common mistake.
John Rolls, director of animal welfare and promotion, said: "The fact that so many people call the RSPCA reaffirms that we are a nation of animal lovers who aren't afraid to report cruelty or neglect.
“Whilst we realise that many calls received can turn out to be genuine mistakes, every year inspectors and animal collection officers are delayed responding to cruelty complaints because they have been sent to a hoax callout.”