B A L D E S S A R I . A N D . C R E P E S

Every now and then you have a day in the city you've lived in for a long time, and you're won over all over again. Yesterday was like that for me, as we took surface streets from Pasadena to the Miracle Mile. Passing through all the brightly painted Spanish homes in Los Feliz, we let each neighborhood surround us at the perfect pace of 35 miles per hour. When you're not in a hurry, LA can be a wonderful place to tour by car. This summer, the heat has been coy--playing hard to get until October, when it will undoubtedly make up for lost time. So it was a mild low-eighty-something as we watched the mysterious tar pits bubbling, while a European folk singer stomped his feet and sang while playing fiddle in the open park. Then we took in the Catherine Opie and Thomas Eakins exhibits, so different in style but similar in subject matter. Eakins' pale athletic boatmen from the last century didn't seem so far off from Opie's adolescent football players. Both artists capture something innocent in the athletic physique. But before long, we ended up in the beautiful Broad building to see John Baldessari's work. This work takes more time to look at, making your brain do jumping jacks and every so often making you chuckle aloud. After all that art, we had worked up an appetite, so it was off to the Farmer's Market for something to eat. I mentioned to Eric that this open air food frenzy isn't a top tourist stop, but it's more like a tourist indulgence for locals. You can bring your children and let the scream and run wild while nobody notices. You can eat something greasy next to actors eating the very same thing. Nobody comes to be seen or "read scripts." People come to eat and have conversation. We settled on the French Crepe Co., a long-surviving vendor. I've never been to Paris, so I don't know how accurate these crepes are, but they taste delicious and the feeling of eating at a counter in a busy marketplace feels European for sure.

L E A R N I N G . . . M I D - A I R

7:15 on a Sunday morning is early. Alarmingly early to receive a phone call from my grandmother. I pick up and she blurts out, “Does Eric know anything about falcons?” Eric, my boyfriend who happened to work as a veterinary technician while he was in art school, looks at me quizzically as I repeat her question out loud. She is frantic.  

Apparently, my grandmother had looked out her window that morning to see a large bird of prey lying injured on her patio stoop. It had been alive, but lethargic, and after weighing the options of letting it stay there or risking injury trying to move it, she decides to call me. 

So without coffee we get dressed and start the twenty-minute drive to her house in Toluca Lake. On the way, I start calling animal shelters, Wildlife Waystation, and Animal Control. Anything run by the city isn’t open on the weekend, which doesn’t help you if the mountain lion in your backyard works Saturdays. Every other place I call isn’t licensed to handle or house ‘raptors.’ And put that way I wonder what we were doing about to handle one.  

Finally, I get a tip. California Wildlife Center in Malibu Canyon. They’ll take anything you can find in Southern California except bears and cougars. They’ve got a truck for pick-ups, but the driver won’t be back for hours. So we either wait it out, or drive the bird ourselves. While Eric gets an over-the-phone refresher on Handling Raptors 101 with the woman from the center, we arrive at my grandmother’s house. I meet her in the driveway and follow her to the backyard to survey the bird. 

Let me say that I don’t particularly like birds—at least I don’t like interacting with them. But the moment I see this creature with intelligent yellow eyes and beautiful feathers I feel determined to help it. Translation, I feel determined to watch Eric help it. With a thick pile of towels, he gently scoops it into the homemade traveling case (a laundry basket topped with a wooden board). The bird stays perfectly still except for blinking at us and lifting his neck feathers. After barricading the back of my grandmother’s station wagon with moving blankets, so he won’t get jostled—we head for the hills. 

The woman from the center meets us in front of a small building beneath a grove of scrub oaks in the Malibu Mountains. She rushes the basket inside telling us to wait. We just stand there, like anxious relatives in a hospital waiting room.  

The woman reappears, our empty basket in hand. “He’s a fledgling Cooper’s Hawk, and he got the sense knocked out of him when he flew into your roof. It’s not uncommon in young raptors that haven’t perfected hunting smaller birds. They can’t steer as well as they can see.” “Will he be all right?” we asked her. “He’s hypothermic, and if I can get his body temperature up, I’d say he’s got a fifty-fifty chance.” After filling out some forms, another employee gives us our hawk’s ID number, so we can call back and check to see if he survives.  

Remarkably, after calling back twice to check on him, we get the good news that he’s going to make a full recovery. The center had moved him to larger outdoor enclosure where he can get his wings back in shape before they release him in a few weeks. It wasn’t until I found out that the bird was going to survive that I gave the story a second thought. The experience taught me that sometimes you have to learn mid-air. There isn’t a training manual for everything.  

____________________________________ 

Young raptors have excellent vision, but it can take time for their flight agility to catch up. It’s very much the same for us beginning new projects. Having the perfect vision, the tiny wren in your sights is one thing. But expertly avoiding the obstacles in your path is another. In the end, if you survive a mistake, you’re probably going to learn from it.

I L O V E C A N A D A

The perfect escape is not always far away. Eh? The family and I just returned from a long weekend in Vancouver, Canada. My Mom and I stayed in Victoria while the boys fished further north on Vancouver Island along the Campbell River. More refreshing than the scenery were the people. Friendly, helpful, and proud of their picturesque homeland. My favorite stop was our morning at the Butchart Gardens--reminiscent of a manicured Wonderland with varieties of plants I've never seen in my life. We also toured the city by horse-drawn buggy and visited the Natural History Museum stocked with towering totems that force you to crane your neck. We had high tea at the Empress hotel and bicycled through Beacon Hill Park where you have to watch out for rogue peacocks. Toward the end of our trip we changed locations from the whimsical Victoria to the clean, green granite machine that is the city of Vancouver. The harbors and waterways were lined with dozens and dozens of blue-green glass buildings. The effect of so many glass structures together was gorgeous, reflecting the mood of the sky and the surrounding tree line.