Flyaway (28 page)

Treating a leg injury in a raptor is easier said than done. Most raptors don't appreciate people messing with them and will show their displeasure by attempting to grab the offender with their powerful feet. Annoyed wild raptors may be handled with minimal risk by wearing a heavy pair of leather gloves; however, thick gloves impede dexterity, which is needed in order to remove a bandage and clean a wound. I have run into complications when working alone, and I need to simultaneously hold the raptor, remove the bandage, and clean the wound. During this process I inevitably forget to lay out a key item, which means I must then hold the raptor, remove the bandage, clean the wound, and somehow lean across the examination table to retrieve the item, where it is always hiding in the very back of my least accessible drawer. Whenever I am treating a large raptor I think longingly of the Hindu goddess Gayatri, who has five heads and ten hands.

Since John was enjoying a stretch of time working at home, he kindly resigned himself to the daily ritual of holding the big redtail while I took care of her leg. One day John, who had a sore back, decided to hold her upside down on his lap instead of on the exam table. In one of my less intelligent moves I agreed, covering her eyes with a small towel and positioning her so I could see her leg. She seemed relaxed and comfortable, so it came as a surprise to both of us when she suddenly gave one mighty struggle, levitated into the air, and
landed right side up on his lap. This meant that there was nothing between his leg and her formidable set of talons but a thin layer of ancient blue jean. We both froze. She briefly looked around, then hopped off his lap and onto a blanket on the floor.

Louise Erdrich once said that the Ojibwe use a single word to describe a man who falls off his motorcycle with a pipe in his mouth and the pipe stem goes through the back of his head. I left the shed wondering what the Ojibwe word would be to describe a man who sits in a chair with a hawk in rehab on his lap and the hawk does a flip and all eight talons go through the man's thigh.

The toes below her injured leg were cold, indicating a possible circulation problem. Each day I treated her leg and then gave her foot and upper leg a massage, silently willing her not to levitate out of John's grip and grab my bare hands with her talons. By the third day her toes were warm but becoming stiff, so I kept it up for another week. Each day her foot would start off clenched and end up limp, proving to me that nobody, whatever the species, can resist a good foot massage.

Her leg healed well although I worried about one of her toes, which curled slightly when she perched. She was a classic redtail—big and fierce but matter-of-fact, accepting her daily handling without becoming either aggressive or frightened. Whenever I looked into her crate she'd stare steadily into my eyes. My dark dreams tapered off, and I dreamed of her flying.

Two weeks after her arrival I moved her into my flight cage. Although there was still a slight curl to her toe, she could fly the twenty-foot length and land on a perch with no trace of discomfort. I wanted her to spend several weeks at a facility with a larger flight cage; if her leg held up I would release her after that, as she was an adult with her own territory, an already proven hunter who needed to go home. Paul had space for her, but at the last minute another friend offered to put her in his big new flight cage with his three redtails. When I released her into the flight she took to the air and landed gracefully on one of the highest perches. I left her exhilarated and optimistic, sure that within a few weeks she could return to her home.

On Winter Solstice there was a full moon and we heard barred owls calling in the woods. We built a small campfire in the field next to our house, huddling in our parkas and staring up at the stars while Mac began a story. He continued until he reached a cliffhanging plot point, then passed it off to Skye. Skye improvised and passed it off to John, and he to me. We went around and around, each of our contributions becoming increasingly outlandish, until we all voted to herd the characters onto a spaceship and send them to the tenth dimension.

Just before Christmas the friend who was taking care of the redtail called, saying her leg looked fine and that she was grasping and landing perfectly. He was about to leave on a trip but his daughter was caring for his birds, and I could pick her up any time. A week after our fun and festive Christmas I was back in my friend's flight cage, staring up at the redtail perched high above my head.

“Oh, my God,” I said to his daughter, who stood beside me. “What happened to her leg?”

“I don't know,” she replied, visibly upset. “Dad said they were all healthy; all I had to do was feed them, and I…I didn't notice anything was wrong until now.”

I caught the redtail and looked at her leg in disbelief. The skin around the wounded area had sloughed off, leaving what little flesh remained around the bone hard and black. Her foot was swollen and clenched into a club.

I drove straight to Croton Animal Hospital. “It's not good,” said Carol Popolow, eyeing the redtail's leg. “It looks like her blood vessels were damaged.”

“Did I put her in the flight cage too soon?” I asked. “Should I have kept up the massage for longer?”

“I don't know that it would have helped,” she said.

I stared at her mutely, silently pleading with her to give me a shred of hope instead of the clear, professional assessment that I always asked for, that she always delivered. She must have sensed my desperation, as she somehow combined the two.

“If you want to, you can treat it for a week and see if it responds,” she said finally. “Even if it does respond, it doesn't mean there won't be other issues. But you can make another decision in a week.”

“Uh-oh,” said John, after I'd settled the redtail for the night. “You look like you could use a nice big glass of wine.”

I had one, then another, and eventually lost count. “Excuse me, whoever you are,” I said, gazing blearily at John at the end of the night. “But what was the reason for this fine evening? Was there some sort of bird calumny? Caluminimy?”

“I believe the word you're looking for is ‘calamity,'” he replied. “And not to worry, all the little birdies are snug in their nests. The only calamity around here is what's happened to your vocabulary.”

The following day, head pounding, I began the redtail's treatment. Each day John would hold her while I carefully washed her leg, dressed it with a special ointment, then padded and wrapped it. Even though we usually referred to her as “the redtail,” we christened her CJ, for Calamity Jane.

By the end of the week her leg was responding, the blackened scab eventually falling off to reveal pink tissue underneath. Despite her ordeal her appetite remained constant, allowing me to hide her pain medication in her food and convincing me that she had the will to continue. But then her toes began to curl, signifying that her tendons were contracting, so I splinted two of them to keep them straight. Her moods shifted. Sometimes I would approach her and she'd stare steadily back into my eyes, positive and strong; other times her depression would hit me like a blow. The ability to feel the mood of an animal is a sense that is strong in some people and weak in others, and can be honed by time and experience and desire. “I promise you,” I whispered to her, even though I never make promises I don't know that I can keep. “I promise I'll let you go.”

She needed more exercise than the large hospital crate could afford her, but she was not yet ready for the flight cage. I began placing her on my heavily padded examination table, upon which rested a thick round section of log.
She'd hop onto the log and I'd roll it slowly back and forth, giving her the opportunity to use her toe and foot muscles to grip and balance. One day she hopped off the log and stood on the table.

“Come back up here,” I said, and tapped the log with my hand. After a moment, she jumped back onto the log. Slowly I reached down to the floor and picked up a wooden perch, which I placed at the other end of the table. When I tapped it, she gathered herself and jumped from the log to the perch. When I tapped the table, she jumped down. Graced by her acceptance of me I'd watch silently as she rocked back and forth on her perch, her great curved talons inches away from my unprotected hand.

Red-tailed Hawk

Then one day she jumped onto the log and quickly turned around, ripping off her entire back talon and staining the white towels red with blood. I washed and padded and wrapped and then wrote a frantic e-mail to Louise Shimmel, who runs the Cascades Raptor Center in Oregon, and who quickly sent back several paragraphs of information about talon regrowth. “You'd be amazed at how often that happens,” Louise concluded. “Carry on and don't beat yourself up over it.”

But of course I did, berating myself for not having a mid-size enclosure that would allow a recovering bird to move about more freely than the hospital crate. My dark dreams returned. Later I called Eileen Wicker, who runs the Kentucky Raptor Center and is another of the Grand Masters of the Raptorcare list, desperate for any piece of advice that might make a difference. “Take down this number,” she said. “They make a healing cream that's the best thing I've ever used. But talons take a long time to grow back,” she finished. “You know she'll be with you for at least a year.”

I alternated between letting her exercise on the table and putting a second padded perch in her crate. When she was on the table she would occasionally bang her bandaged talon sheath and make it bleed, but if she stayed in her crate her tendons would begin to contract and her toes to curl. I massaged her leg and toes, trying to believe that I could heal her damaged limb through sheer force of will. Increasingly restless, she eyed the windows and made me fear that she would suddenly launch herself through one of them, to try to escape a life over which she had no control. At the beginning of the third week I called the Raptor Trust and talked to Kristi Ward, whom I had met once and spoken to many times over the phone. I relayed everything Dr. Popolow had said, describing the situation calmly until the end, when my voice began to betray me.

“Kristi,” I said. “I would do anything for her. But I'm so tired. I'm afraid I'm not making the right decisions. I want what's best for her. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing.”

“Of course, we'll take her,” said Kristi. “Bring her down.”

That afternoon CJ slipped off the table, dropped to the floor, and broke off another talon.

I took her to the Raptor Trust the following morning and drove home with an empty carrier, searching for something more I could have done for her, wondering if I should have done as much as I did. I wrote Ed a long stream of consciousness, ending with an anguished mea culpa. “Dear Suzie,” came the immediate reply, “Shakespeare said in
Measure for Measure
: ‘Our doubts are traitors, / And make us lose the good we oft might win, / By fearing to attempt.'” When I finally slept I dreamed of a forest where redtails hung from the trees, struggling to set themselves free.

Several days later I called the Raptor Trust. “We put her in the clinic,” said Kristi, “but she was really nervous and upset. She started bashing and knocked off another talon, so we put her outside in a small flight.”

I'm going to lose her, I thought.

“While she was in the flight she knocked off her last talon,” she said. “Our vet examined her and said her circulation had been too badly compromised. She's not going to be releasable. I'm really sorry.”

“Is she in pain?” I managed.

“She's not putting any weight on that leg,” said Kristi.

“What do you think is the best thing for her?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Our vet advised us to euthanize her,” she said quietly, “but we'll do anything you want us to do.”

I promised I'd let her go.

After I hung up the phone I put on my running shoes, called Merlin, and ran to the top of a ridge high above the Hudson River, high above a world for the most part oblivious to the death of a thousand redtails, let alone one. I sat on the frozen ground and hugged my knees, my body knotted and aching.

Bring them back, then let them go.

I brought her back. Twice. And for what?

I returned red-eyed to the house, where John and the kids provided sympa
thy and consolation and sent me to bed early. Exhausted and defeated, I slept a black and dreamless sleep for ten hours and woke up in tears. Pulling myself together, I awakened the kids and readied them for school and walked them down to the bus, then fell apart when I returned to the house.

For the next few days I held myself together around my family, none of whom were fooled. I assured them I was all right while trying to stave off a growing sense of panic. I had no wild birds to care for, but kept thinking there was one I had forgotten. I stared straight ahead as I ran through the woods, expecting to see CJ flying beside me out of the corner of my eye, but she wasn't there. I spotted a redtail soaring above the field, but it wasn't her. I went to sleep hoping for a dream, even if it was a bad one, but my dreams had vanished.