Parasites

There was no doubt, the nest was in a difficult place but I was getting a hawk. Dean and Gary had beautiful rough-legged a female and a male respectively and I, the true falconer, had nothing. The year before, I had had Chris the peregrine. We had scoured the country side north of Vernal Utah looking for a late nest of hawks as I had lost my rough legged to a cat. Finally we found a Red Tail nest in a difficult spot. As they lowered me over the 75-100 ft. cliff I was dangling in mid air. The nest was back about 10 feet. The stick I had was barely long enough. It was difficult to raise the stick and the right time because I had no way of controlling the way I faced the nest. As I raised the stick I would spin. The 5/8 inch manila rope was digging into my legs. There were two young birds which were feathered out enough to fly so it looked, they looked healthy from the loft so I worked at making one leave its nest. Finally with some resistance one was falling downward. It instinctively spread its wings and started moving horizontally as it fell. It was not commanding the wind near as well as I had anticipated. The terrain was extremely rough below, large jagged boulders. The young bird crashed into one of the larger ones.

Dean and Gary pulled me up. We were excited that one was on the ground. We made careful mental note of the bird’s location and began the hike down. Fifteen minutes later we had the young red tail. It was scared, gasping and defensive. I skillfully grabbed it around the lower body pulling its legs straight. The next morning as I examined the red tail I found funny pulsing things in its ears and red tiny beads around its beak and eyes. Well, the pulsing things were maggots and the red beads mites. I pulled the maggots out with tweezers and washed the mites away with an alcohol cloth.

This red tail never did development a healthy spirit. Three weeks passed and its flying was overdue. It ate without enthusiasm and did not like to flap its wings. One morning I was so disappointed I began throwing it in the air I threw it 40 to 50 times, each time with as much might as I could; thinking that perhaps it would instantly appreciate the freedom of flight and take off. As I became more frantic it was apparent that this bird may never fly. I began sobbing as it repeating settled on the ground with a weak chirp and with as little wing motion as possible.

Sometime later, while reflecting on this experience the thought entered my heart. Don’t you think the hawk wanted to fly as much as I wanted it to. As I pondered, I felt so ashamed I had thrown it so many times. I do not know if it was the loss of equilibrium because of possible damage the maggots may have done to the ear area, if it was the impact of crashing into the boulder that damaged the bones or muscles or if it was something else, but from the outside this hawk looked glorious but on the inside it was damaged and I had no right to expect more from it than it could do. As I have grown in life I have also learned that at times this is the case with the people we meet. There is only one who knows the whole story and is able to judge.