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.
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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.
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