In that spirit, here's another tidbit of the Memoir of Doom. Here's the beginning bit: Memoir, Part 1
___________
A few net
runs later, Anna, Laura, and I were trudging our way to one of the
farther-flung nets. It was mid-morning, which meant that the morning caffeine
dose had worn off, the birds were taking their 8am nap, and it wasn’t lunch
time yet. This was our last net before looping back around to the tarp and we
weren’t expecting our current state of empty-handedness to change. As we came
up to the net, a three-fold “What the hell?” went out to the universe. The net
was moving. It looked like a blanket
thrown over an angry cat. Whatever was making it twitch and seize like that was
obscured by the two large trees near the net.
Anna’s exclamation of “Holy lord Jesus!”
pretty much summed it up. In the bottom pocket, resting against the ground, was
a medium-sized, upside-down, highly pissed off brownish hawk. Some birds scream
and yell when they get caught (like robins and woodpeckers), but raptors just
hiss at you and glare. And, let me tell you, it’s terrifying. “What the hell do we do with that thing?” Anna said
after inching closer and tilting her head a few funny directions. “Should I go
back and get Ted?”
“No no, we’ve totally got this,” assured
Laura. “I interned at a raptor sanctuary last summer, and it doesn’t look that
tangled.” She moved closer and bent down. “Yeah, it’s really just its feet. Its
body and feathers are too big to fit through the mesh… it’s just sitting there.”
She pulled open the pocket to stare down at the hawk, who was hissing louder
now and staring up at her as if contemplating how best to serve up her
intestines (Dill? Sage? Paprika?). “This is gonna be a two-person job, for sure.
She’s big and she’s Hulk-level pissed.”
“She?” I asked stupidly.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s a
Red-Shoulder female.”
“Do we even own a bag big enough for
her?” asked Anna, digging in her various pockets for bird bags.
Let me interject here for some
Red-Shouldered Hawk stats, so you can have some idea of the lethal and
predatory ball of feathered rage we were dealing with. Red-Shoulders are
considered medium-sized hawks and, like in all raptors, the females are significantly
larger than the males. Males are 17-20 inches from head to tail, and females
are 20-24 inches long. Wingspan ranges from 36-40 inches in males and 40-44
inches in females. So, we’re talking about a body the size of a small baby,
with a foot-long striped tail, and a wingspan longer than my arm. All that, with
razor-sharp talons on one end and a wickedly hooked beak on the other end. And
pissed.
“No bag for her, can you imagine
reaching in there blind to pull her out? You wouldn’t have any fingers left!”
Laura shuddered. “Ok, I’m going to try to untangle her feet. Anna, could you
hold onto her upper body and keep her from flapping? Sarah, you should hold the
pocket open until we can lift her out.”
“Hold on a second, I’m not touching that
thing! It’ll bite me!” Anna looked a little green.
“Hawks aren’t bitey. She won’t bite you.
Probably.”
“How very reassuring. Still not touching
it.”
“Sarah, how about—”
“It’ll bite me too!” I wasn’t looking to
donate any fingers either.
“She won’t bite you! Jeez, you’re both
such chicken shits!”
“Ok, fine. But you’re responsible for
sewing my fingers back on!” Not chicken shit. Not at all.
“Finally. And seriously, hawks kill
things with their feet, and I’ll keep those under control.” She took a deep
breath. “Ok, Sarah. Reach in—slowly!—and grab her around the middle… pin her
wings in, thumbs on her back, fingers on her chest, got it?”
“Heh… sure, no problem… just grab the
angry carnivore, no worries…” But I reached into the net anyway. To my very
great surprise, she didn’t even try to bite me, just turned toward me, tried to
flap out of my reach, and hissed some more. I was able to get my hands around
her partially extended wings and pin them to her sides, gripping her body
securely. She flailed her legs a bit and drew attention to her seriously
scary-looking talons. They were a puncture wound waiting to happen. Laura had
been right: her feathers were too large to have gotten caught in the 30mm mesh,
so she was just lying in the pocket, caught by her feet and her beak. Laura
brushed the net off of the hawk’s shoulders and examined her beak. It was open
in the constant hiss and there were a few strands of net wrapped around her
tongue.
Laura indicated that we should all kneel
down. Bending over would get tiring pretty quick. Anna held the pocket open and
Laura gingerly reached for its legs, which were still sporadically kicking and
grabbing. After a close swipe to her thumb, she got its feet under control and gestured
with her chin at Anna. “Can you get her tongue untangled, Madame Chicken? Use a
stick or something, don’t stick your hand in there.”
Anna glared and reached for her pocket
knife and the nail file it contained. “I still think it’s gonna bite my fingers
off,” she muttered. But, she still reached toward the hawk’s beak, muttering “Niiiice
birdie…” under her breath. The hawk eyed her as she gripped her upper mandible
and reached inside with the nail file. The hissing got louder and the kicking
got more intense, but Anna was able to slide the net strands off of the bird’s
tongue, freeing it. She exhaled in a huff and put her pocket knife away.
“Ok, now we should be able to lift her
out of the pocket… it’s just her feet left!” Laura said. “Hold the pocket open…
Sarah, one… two… three… uuuup and over!” The hawk was now resting on her back
on my lap, her feet still attached to the net, the pocket turned inside-out. We
had a much better angle and view now, and the bulk of the net was out of the
way.
“Need me to hold its legs? It looks like
you’ll need both hands for those feet,” Anna offered, as if she hadn’t been
about to run away a minute ago. Laura raised an eyebrow at her and smirked. Anna
shrugged. “It didn’t bite me.”
“That would be lovely, thank you,” Laura
replied sweetly and, still smirking, carefully transferred the hawk’s legs into
Anna’s hand. It took another five-ish minutes of careful picking at the black
nylon net strands, swearing, and back-seat driving before Laura finally got the
hawk’s feet completely free. “Ha! Piece of cake!” Laura said with a triumphant
grin. It had only managed to claw her once, in the meaty part of her palm,
which we counted as a success, all things considered.
Anna had to help me up (my hands were a
bit full and my legs had fallen asleep) and then we were speed-walking back to
the tarp with our prize. Laura kept looking at the bird’s legs critically. “I
don’t think we’ve got a band big enough for her...”
Anna shrugged. “Ted’ll know what to do.”
When we were almost out of the trees and
into the clearing where the tarp was located, Leslie came jogging along the
trail “What’s taking so lo— Holy shit!” Her eyes went wide and she slowed as
she reached us. “They sent me to make sure you hadn’t fallen in a hole
somewhere. Wow, best bird ever!” She
turned and ran ahead of us back to the tarp, yelling something about ‘not in a
hole’ as she went. Anna walked in front of me, blocking the view of my cargo
from the people sitting on the tarp. Leslie was standing to the side, smiling
gleefully and everyone else looked curious.
“Guess what Net 3 coughed up?” said
Anna, as we approached. She stepped to the side and made a sweeping bow “Ta-da!”
Sure enough, none of the bands we
carried with us were anywhere near large enough for our girl, so Ted took some
measurements, enough to ascertain that she was indeed a ‘she’. A million
photographs later, we released her, which was an adventure all its own. Hawks
are large enough and heavy enough that they need to push off of something to
get airborne. Normally this is the ground or a branch. In order to avoid having
a hand clawed to pieces, hawks get ‘launched’ when released. You don’t want
them to push off of you, so you give them the momentum they need by literally
tossing them into the air. We let Laura do this, as nobody wanted to run the
risk of having their face clawed if they didn’t toss high enough. She flapped
to a tree and sat for a few minutes before flying back in the direction we’d
come.
On to part 3!
On to part 3!
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