In one of my earlier meanderings, Criminal Crows, I mentioned emergency surgery on a baby hawk. As I mentioned, this was not voluntary, nor was I qualified in any way to attempt this. The story goes like this, and it’s true, and I can prove it because I have pictures. I will not post these because the top of my head looks like Yul Brynner, but that’s the only part of my body where there’s any similarity or resemblance. Some have referred to me as butt-ugly, but not my spouse. She just leaves off the butt part.
Anyway, some years back, I came home from work after an arduous week, and was looking forward to a quiet weekend in that we had successfully chased most of the gophers away, and the dust bowl administration had been dissolved for approximately 20 years. I was standing on our completed back patio, with my usual vodka martini, very dry and on the rocks, shaken but not stirred.
Over the past weeks we had noticed a Hawk’s nest in one of our neighbor’s pine trees. Although we live in a rural area, it is fairly well-populated, and some of my “birder friends” told me it was relatively unusual to see a nest in the area. The “curtain climbers” were well on their way to full adulthood, having realized that the college tuition money tree had died. In reality, they all had jobs, which was financially, in ecclesiastical terms, a blessed event. This has nothing to do with the hawk. It’s just background information to waste more of your time.
It was early spring when we began a routine of watching the nesting habits of these killer birds. The tree they chose is not all that stable, and the nest was clearly exposed and about 60 feet in the air. It was clear that there were eggs because of the continual racket made by the raptors during this hatching process. A few days earlier, my spouse told me that she thought the babies had come into this world. I guess the proper phrase is hatched.
We had a couple of binoculars and would often sit after dinner and watch the comings and goings of mom and pop Hawk. It was clear the “young-uns” were growing because we were able to see a number of tiny little heads, without much fuzz. At which point my spouse mentioned certain similarities between the baby birds and my semi-chromed-domed overly exposed scalp. As a side note, I had what is laughingly called a buzz cut, which leaves about an eighth of an inch of whatever hair you might have had. That’s probably more data than you needed. I digress, back to the story!
On this Friday evening, I was watching with my trusty binoculars as one of the parents was feeding its siblings, and much to my shock, watched it reach over and push this little gray bundle of fuzz out of the nest! “Holy mackerel,” I said, but admit that I cleaned that up to maintain a PG rating if such a thing exist on blogs. I watched as a baby gray bird tumbled at least 60 feet, hitting branches and dead limbs before disappearing behind a six-foot fence, and I assume smacking into the underbrush. I went into the house where dinner was in final preparation and told “blue-eyes” what had happened. She flipped out and said “you’ve got to save it.” I asked her “where are my leotards and cape?” Actually, I said, “unfortunately the gray bird is probably D.O.A.” I think she asked if I wanted to eat dinner off a plate or off the floor? As slow as I am, I got the message.
I went back out by the fence, which is 6 feet high, peeked over and saw nothing. I then went next door to sound the alarm, but no one was home, or my wise neighbor wanted nothing to do with me. I yelled a few times but got no response. I went back to the fence and in a single bound, leaped over to begin the search for a gray bundle of fuzz. Not really, I went and got one of our ladders!
My neighbor had let this area turn into a small jungle and I organized a search team of me, myself and I, to begin the process of looking for the remains. Within a few moments, much to my horror, I found this poor devil, split wide open to bird flesh from just below the breast bone down to what could eventually be called talons. Amazingly, it was still alive, but in bad shape. I called to the corpsman for plasma, but realized I was too far behind enemy lines. God, I’m hallucinating again! I picked the poor baby up, leaped over the fence and went back to a table on the patio. I called blue-eyes and told her of the situation and suggested she look. She promptly told me what I could do with that.
Clearly, fuzzball was in a state of shock. I was tempted to give it a shot of brandy, but realized that we didn’t have any. I wrapped the outcast in a towel and noted that it had enough strength to attempt to bite me. I thought, “What the hell, I’ll sew it up!” I immediately wheeled the patient into surgery. Actually, I went to my spouse’s sewing kit, selected some white cotton thread and a small needle. The danger here was that the bird would kick the bucket before this left-brain idiot could thread the needle! Think about that!
Finally, success in passing this little thread through a hole smaller than the thread. I began emergency treatment. I sterilized the wound with some bourbon and spread a big gob of Neosporin all over the belly, if that’s the right phrase, of fuzzball. It looked at me with somewhat blurry eyes, and I thought it was motioning for more bourbon. I muttered something to the effect, “you can not fly for 24 hours after having a drink. FAA rules!” Fuzzball looked at me and I believe it was thinking “dummy, you can call it an antiseptic.” I have big fingers, which is not the stuff surgeons are made of, but I attempted to align the ripped outer layer of skin and feathers simply for cosmetic purposes, in case the bird lived and wanted a career in motion pictures, likely flying scenes.
Sweat was pouring off my brow, and I ordered nurse Nightingale, otherwise known as blue-eyes, to fetch me another vodka martini, strictly for medicinal purposes! Her question was, “who’s going to drink it, you or fuzzball?” I thought God, I could get disbarred for this, then realized that applied to lawyers, not doctors. This was a waste of thought, because I don’t think it has ever happened to lawyers, but I digress! I did what I remembered of stitching up wounds, which I think was, “knit one – pearl two” for you of the right-brain portion of civilization. (Left-brainers, forget it, it’s too hard to explain!)
Fuzzball was sent to recovery, which in fact, was an old shoebox in the garage with some towels for heat and comfort. I forgot to put on our handy respirator. My assumption at this point is if it gets through the night, we can allow visitors, but not the parents because I’ve sworn out a warrant for their arrest. I made a mental note before falling asleep to check on fuzzball because we had no call button that was working. My garage is not state-of-the-art.
The next morning, much to our surprise fuzzball was still among the avian nation, although a little worse for the wear. I checked him over for gangrene, but not knowing what gangrene was, I finally gave up. The bird was actually standing, if you could call it that and weaving a little, probably the results of the bourbon.
After breakfast, I took it outside to give it some fresh air, and consistent with current post-surgery practices, made fuzzball get up and walk around the patio table. Now keep in mind this happened on a Friday night and we did try to get help from some agency that had a clue as to what to do, but to no avail. We tried again on Saturday with no luck. It seems our national medical system has no provisions for bird emergency situations, only human bird-brain situations are supported. Once again, our tax dollars at work! But I digress.
Nurse Nightingale and I conferred. The general prognosis was good, however we knew fuzzball would not make it without sustenance. Knowing full well that raptors are carnivorous, we decided that raw meat was the best prescription. Fortunately, we had some fresh sirloin steak which I chopped into tiny little small slivers and decided to attempt to feed the bird. At first fuzzball completely resisted my nutritional attempts to provide the much-needed energy for full recovery. I couldn’t get it to open its beak, even after explaining that this was nine-dollar a pound sirloin steak. Finally, in desperation I put my that fingers around its beak forcing it open and shoved in a piece of sirloin. Fuzzball went berserk. I couldn’t cut the steak fast enough. I think fuzzball said “where’s the mushrooms?” At this point, nurse Nightingale was worried about overfeeding fuzzball. My comment was “this bird is like our kids, it just keeps eating!” Better judgment prevailed, and I quit feeding it.
On Sunday we made further attempts to contact responsible people that might know what the hell they’re doing, which is more than we did. No luck! Finally, from work on Monday, I got a hold of some outfit locally, who showed some interest in fuzzball’s dilemma. Finally, we got someone to agree to send out an associate who would take fuzzball to a more suitable environment, thank you very much. As something of an afterthought, I noted that mom and pop Hawk could care less what happened to fuzzball. Philosophically my thoughts were, “I thought only human beings did that sort of thing.”
The erstwhile deviant avian society made arrangements to pick up fuzzball late Tuesday afternoon. A lady came to the door, was very professional and I explained what I had done. She shook her head in something of a negative inclination giving me the impression that I should’ve just killed it. I mentioned to her that I had been feeding it sirloin steak and she just shook her head in utter disgust saying that there will be severe physical handicaps for fuzzball. I looked at her and commented “yeah, eating sirloin steak has caused me physical deprivation. I’m sure you’re right, I probably killed the bird!” She said that the proper feeding routine was to chop up a mouse, because it needed the bones to create the proper level of protein. I almost got sick!
With a parting comment she left a card suggesting that we send a donation to their organization, noting their policy was if the bird lived, which she said was questionable at best based on my maltreatment, they had a practice of bringing the creatures back to release them where they were found. Naturally, after her comments I wanted to make a donation. I was running for my checkbook, which unfortunately I couldn’t find.
Over the months I often wondered if fuzzball made it.
About three months later we got a phone call from the same group, but a nicer personality indicating that they would like to release fuzzball. Nurse Nightingale and I were overjoyed that our medical expertise had been successful. When the release expert came out, I explained what we had done with fuzzball and her comment was a very commendable statement, that at least I knew enough to align the feathers on the birds breast. Had I not done this, fuzzball would’ve flown crooked all its life. She had with her large cage, put on some leather gloves and reached in, and pulled out the biggest damn hawk I’ve ever seen. I concluded the sirloin steak did it. Fuzzball was really pissed. She put her arm in the air and released this magnificent looking bird which promptly flew to the tree it was pushed from, stopped, looked down, and I could swear I heard it say “where’s the bourbon?”
Every so often I go into the backyard, and guess what? There’s a hawk sitting in the same general location, looking at our house. Now I’d like to think that it’s the same fuzzball, but I really doubt it. However, the spooky thing is I notice every so often I’m missing some bourbon. I know it’s not blue-eyes because she thinks it tastes like iodine. Could it be???
J.J. Addingnuttin 