Flyaway (13 page)

For a week I had no wild birds, and my list of people to call for advice sat idle while I did all the chores that had been pushed aside by the hectic summer. I had been so dazzled by the heron that his death had thrown me, yet I found myself listening for the ring of the telephone. Although I had made no announcement, I had crossed the divide. There were so many injured birds in the world—didn't any of them need my help?

“I hope you can help me,” said the voice on the telephone. “Maggie gave me your number. I have an injured peregrine falcon.”

I took a quick breath. Peregrine falcons are the jet fighters of the bird world, dramatically colored little self-guided missiles that disappear into the sky and then knife downward at their prey at a heart-stopping 200 miles per hour. Their name comes from the Latin word for “wanderer,” as their migrations take them to both hemispheres. Nearly driven to extinction by DDT and other pesticides, they have made a remarkable comeback but are still on the Endangered Species list in New York as well as in twelve out of eighteen other eastern states. Those who work with raptors have their personal favorites, but all are awed by the peregrine, just as all sports buffs are awed by the athlete who possesses the perfect combination of muscle, skill, and heart.

A second later I let my breath out and smiled. Rehabilitators love to talk about their cases of mistaken identities. An “opossum” turns out to be a rat,
a “baby eagle” a pigeon, a “rabid hawk” an angry duck. My favorite was the goodhearted Maine tourist who chased a “deformed Great Dane” through the woods, determined to get it some medical help, until she was interrupted by its irritated mother (a moose). “Peregrine falcons” nearly always turn out to be a Cooper's or a sharp-shinned hawk, if not a crow or a grouse.

But whatever it was, it needed help.

“The problem is, I can't get him to you,” continued the voice. “Is there any way you could come and pick him up? I'm at Entergy.”

We are not too far from Entergy, better known as Indian Point. After 9/11 there were massive protests and demands to close the nuclear power facility, which is located on the Hudson River only fifty miles north of New York City, because many nearby residents feared it could be a terrorist target. The company held firm, adding more security, widening its PR campaigns, and eventually riding out the protests.

The bus arrived, and Mac volunteered to come with me while Skye stayed with John. I explained the fact that “peregrines” were never peregrines, and we took turns guessing what the mystery creature would be, each guess becoming more and more outlandish.

“It's a naked mole rat!” I said.

“It's an Australian frilled lizard!” countered Mac.

Finally we drove past the
ENTERGY
sign and caught sight of five burly men, all holding very large machine guns. It looked as though the newly ramped-up security system was working, at least around the entrance booth. Each man turned, scowling, and stared at us. Mac gasped.

“Mom,” he whispered. “This is
so cool
.”

It didn't seem like the right time to start a discussion about either arms control or the downside to nuclear power, so I kept silent as I pulled up to the booth. One of the men leaned, unsmiling, toward the car. “Help you?” he snapped.

“I'm, uh…here to pick up the . . uh…bird,” I stammered.

Instantly the man broke into a wide grin. “Oh! The bird!” he said. “Come on in!” He gestured to the others. “She's picking up the bird!”

“They're here for the bird!” chortled one of the men, slinging his gun into a more casual position over his shoulder.

“That's a really nice bird,” replied a cohort, adjusting his bulletproof vest and nodding vigorously.

“Mom!” Mac hissed. “You think you could get them to shoot something for me? Like how about that car over there?”

“Here's the patient,” announced yet another man, who had materialized holding a cardboard box. In short order the small army opened the back of my Jeep, placed the box carefully onto the floor, and quietly closed the door. “Take good care of him,” rumbled the one who'd brought the box, while indicating that I should turn the car around and leave without delay.

“Awwww, we can't leave yet!” Mac protested on the way out. “Say, how old would I have to be to get one of those guns?”

“Eight hundred and six,” I replied, “and don't think I'm kidding, either.”

It was a Friday afternoon, Wendy was at the hospital, and her office hours were nearly over. In short order Wendy, Mac, and I were standing around an examination table, upon which rested the mysterious box. “It's a ‘peregrine falcon,'” I said, hooking my fingers dramatically around the name.

I opened the box. We all stared, open-mouthed.

“Whoa!” said Mac. “It's a peregrine falcon!”

A wild peregrine is the embodiment of speed and unfettered flight; to see one injured and grounded is to be affected not only by the individual bird but also by the stark symbolism of its condition. Our falcon huddled in the box, too weak to move; infinitely precious, and almost dead.

We guessed that the young bird, less than a year old, had either flown into an Indian Point window or been blown into one of the nearby Hudson River bridges by a sudden downdraft. His beak was split from the nares (nostrils) down to the tip, which had separated into two fanglike points. The surround
ing tissue was black and caked with flecks of dried blood. More alarming, though, was his weight. His normally strong, firm chest muscles had dwindled as starvation consumed them; now, in the final stages of emaciation, they had all but disappeared, leaving nothing but skin and bone.

Dehydration could be remedied with subcutaneous fluids, but reintroducing food into his depleted system would be trickier. At this point solid food would kill him, as his body would use the last of its fading reserves in a futile attempt at digestion. A liquid, easily absorbed food mixture would have to be syringed directly into his crop—birds' temporary food storage area, located at the base of their esophagus—by inserting a tube down his throat. Only when his system was working again would he be capable of eating solid food.

“You still not taking injured birds?” asked Wendy with a grin.

“I'm being sucked into the abyss,” I said.

“Join the crowd,” she said. “You'll have to feed him every two hours for the next couple of days.”

“That's all right,” I said. “How late into the night?”

“How long can you stay awake?” she replied.

It wasn't difficult to tube the peregrine, as he was too weak to resist. I wrapped him like a papoose, straightened his neck, opened his beak, inserted the tube, and before he knew it, it was over. That night I gave him his midnight meal, yawning, then set him up in a medium-size crate in John's office, thinking it would be quieter. I turned the heat up to 80 degrees, placed a heating pad in the back corner of the crate, draped it with blankets, and turned off the lights.

The next morning at 6:00 I hurried into the office, looked into the crate, and recoiled. The little falcon was lying on his chest, breathing heavily. When I reached in to pick him up his eyes closed, his breathing stopped, and he was still.

I stared down in disbelief. My first Endangered Species was dead. How could this have happened? Why did I ever go bed? And what if the Indian Point Army found out I killed their bird?

I grabbed a blanket from the top of the crate, wrapped it around the peregrine, and cradled him. “You can't die,” I said pathetically. “Wake up. Please. Wake up.”

There was no response. I tucked the little bundle against me, searching in vain for any sign of life. Finally, with an ache in my throat, I started to put him down. As soon as I did, his head moved. His eyelids fluttered, and slowly he opened his eyes.

Later that morning, after he had been moved into the house and was thoroughly warm, stable, and fed, I sat near the crate, feeling like I'd survived a mortar attack.

“How's the patient?” said John, coming into the room.

“I'm trying to figure out exactly what happened,” I said. “Physiologically.”

“Maybe he saw The Light and flew the other way,” said John, who feels compelled to provide some sort of response to all unanswered questions. “Maybe he suddenly saw all his dead relatives staring at him and decided to return to your loving arms.”

“Will you please get me another towel?” I said, with irritation.

For the next two days I stuck to the schedule like an overzealous new mother, warming the mixture to the perfect temperature and delivering the goods every two hours from 7
A.M
. to 10
P.M
. Unwilling to house him more than a few steps away from me, I put his crate in our bathroom. Occasionally Mac and Skye would look in, exclaim over the general awesomeness of peregrines, and then disappear, graciously accepting the new household rule that kids should not pal around with recuperating raptors.

One afternoon I was standing in front of the kitchen sink, concocting more tubing mixture and studiously ignoring the telephone, when I heard a commotion coming through the machine.

“
Ciao, bella!
” the voice shouted. “Put the bird down and pick up the phone! I know you're in there!”

“
Ciao, bella!
” Mario roared back in Italian. “
Bel uccello
!” (Beautiful bird!)

It was my old college buddy Pancho Castanheira, the crazy multilingual
Brazilian Buddhist who had lived a peregrine-like existence before finally settling in San Francisco. When we first met we spent the evening comparing the schools and clubs we'd been thrown out of and drinking the aptly named Scaglione, a red wine guaranteed to take the paint off a car. “You got kicked out of
military school
?” I remember saying. “Now, that's impressive.”

Pancho loves peregrine falcons and was delighted to hear that I was hosting one. “Did you give him a name?” he asked. “Pancho,” I said, without hesitation. “Junior.”

Pancho Senior supplied me with two phrases in Spanish, his first language, and from then on whenever I approached the peregrine I'd repeat them softly: “
iHola, Panchito!—¿Cómo está mi pájaro guapo? ¿Te sientes mejor?
” (“Hello, little Pancho—How is my handsome bird? Are you feeling better?”) Eventually, whenever I would say those words, he'd cock his head to the side, which I translated from the peregrinese as “Yo—Anything good on the menu?”

By the third day the menu included some solid food. One of the complications of rehabbing birds of prey is that they need to eat entire animals—organs, skin, bones, and all—to stay healthy. The charming story of someone's finding a baby owl in the woods and raising it on hamburger never seems to include the ending, when the owl develops metabolic bone disease and eventually dies of calcium and other vitamin deficiencies. Anyone feeding a raptor properly needs to have a freezer filled with things that would make the average person scream and run.

At this point Pancho's delicate system was not ready for a whole animal, so I dug through the freezer until I found a bag labeled “small mice,” given to me over the summer by a rehabber dropping off a songbird. I put one mouse into a baggie and then into a container of hot water, and a half hour later filleted it into a few prime bites. After his tubing mixture I opened Pancho's beak and put in two bites of mouse, which he was perfectly happy to swallow.

Most birds of prey are solitary creatures, and they value their freedom. They are not touchy-feely, like parrots; they will tolerate a human being as long as the human brings them food and doesn't annoy them, but in most cases if the
situation presents itself they will take off without a backward glance and never return. Young raptors, however, especially young ones recovering from a catastrophic injury, can become quite relaxed and comfortable around their initial caregiver. In the short term, this is a good thing, as any kind of stress will hamper healing. In the long term, however, it is not a good thing; you cannot release a raptor that will land on an unsuspecting person's head the minute he feels a hunger pang. Once the bird is active and healthy, the best thing to do is either put him into a flight cage, where he will soon resume his independent ways, or transfer him to another rehabber. Or both.

At this point Pancho was far from healthy, although he was stable and quickly gaining strength. I took him back to Wendy for a checkup, this time transporting him in a carrier with a perch.

“What a difference!” said Wendy. “He looks so much better.”

Beaks and fingernails are made from a substance called keratin, and both grow the same way. Only time would tell if the growth plate behind the falcon's beak had been damaged beyond its ability to heal itself. Meanwhile, Wendy tied the split ends together with catgut and then epoxied the middle, hoping to stabilize it enough to allow him eventually to eat by himself. It was a definite improvement, of course, but with his huge dark eyes, beautiful coloring, and battered beak, he reminded me of a spectacularly handsome hockey player who smiles to reveal a mouthful of broken teeth.

The regenerative power of wild birds can be truly remarkable. Six days after nearly starving to death, Pancho was hopping from log to log on the floor of the bathroom, which I'd set up to give him more space, while clouds of steam loosened the dried blood from his nasal passages. No longer on a liquid diet, he'd snatch gory little mouse bits from my oversized tweezers as his weight continued to climb. My laundry area became a rendering plant; the kids would walk up the hill from the school bus and find me hunched over the washing machine like a demented sushi chef, animatedly skinning small piles of rodents.

“She's doing that mouse thing again,” Mac would say with a doleful sigh.

“Eeewwww, Mommy, you are
so gross
,” Skye added disgustedly.