With their permission I am just going to paste the letter that Carlos wrote to his Granddaughter Sophie (an 11-year "old" aspiring veterinarian.)
I wish that all of us, Grandparents, shared our experiences with the youngest generation in such way.
So touching!
Here it is:
THE CHICKEN THIEF
Dear Sophie,
I might have mentioned to you, that some unknown animal was
steeling our baby chicks. We started out with 15 babies, and as of today we
were left with only 5. How sad!!! We were thinking that this might be a weasel,
since we saw her stealing turkey eggs about 2 weeks ago from our turkey hen,
when she was making a wild nest in the bamboo bushes.
So, to protect the
baby chicks I built a high mesh fence around the chicken patio. It didn’t help.
Another baby chick disappeared. So, I placed a mesh overhead, kind of a wire mesh
roof. Unfortunately, I ran out of the mesh wire, so we placed some fabrics over
the remaining open area. That seemed to work for a couple of days … until Sunday afternoon.
I was just finishing the sheep food preparation, when I could hear
Tisha coming up the fern trail from the old chicken run.
“I have a present for
you,” I could hear her from behind the bend of the trail.
I stopped piling up
the feed bags and looked in her direction. And there she was, carrying the old,
rusty cage we have hanging on a tree as a decoration. In the cage was something
big, wild.
“What is it?” I
asked, walking towards her.
She lifted the cage …
and I could see a good size hawk staring at me with his intense, orange eyes.
“Wow…” is all I could
say at first. I have never seem a live hawk from up close, and I could not
imagine how Tisha
got this fierce bird into the cage.
“That’s the chicken
thief!” she said in a stern voice, and with her finger rattled the cage. The
hawk jumped and I though he is going to bite her finger.
“How did you get
him?” I asked incredulously, still non believing what she had.
“Actually. it wasn’t
that hard,” she said. “I was just walking by the chicken house and suddenly I
hear a big ruckus. So I ran to the baby chicken area, and there he was. He
probably slipped in through the cracks in the fabric, but then could not remember how to get out. He likely flew against the mesh, hit himself and fell
to the ground.”
“Wow … he is quite
daring to slip into the chicken aviary," I said.
“I think that’s the
rascal that’s been stealing the chicken, so he is quite confident. But guess
what?”
“No idea,” I said.
"When I got
there, the two mother hens had him in the corner and were trashing him real
bad. I guess, if I didn’t come in time, they might have killed. They were
really furious.”
“That’s amaizing,” I
said, thinking how brave the hens were. “What are we gona do with him?” I
asked.
“Why don’t we leave
him in the cage for couple of hours, as a punishement for stealing the chicken.
And then we'll let him go. Maybe he has learned his leson and won’t come back.”
“How about some
photos?” I asked.
“Good idea.”
After about two hours I brought my camera. We had the cage inside
the workshop, so the dogs would not bother him, and also just in case he got
away when we were taking him out of the cage.
Tisha reached into
the cage and grabbed him from above, by the back and the wings. She got him out
easily.
“I think we should
hold him by the legs for the pictures. I saw that in one documentary. It looks
realy cool.”
“Okay," said
Tisha, and tipped him sideways, so I could grab the legs. But they were none in
site. I guess he hid them under his belly feathers. To see what was going on, I
probed around his belly with my index finger. In a flash one leg shot out, and as my
finger came into contact with the sensitive under-pad of his foot, an automatic
reaction happened.
He
grabbed my finger with his fingers, very tightly I may say, and before I could
react, his razor sharp talons penetrated my finger. All four of them. The
talons are about one and half centimeters long, so they went through my index finger very easily, and were sticking out on the other sides of the finger.
“Ouch!” I yelled and
jerked my hand.
A wrong move. The
jerking motion triggered another reaction and the grip tightened even more. With
my free hand I tried to loosen one of the claws. Almost impossible. The grip
was so strong, and the claws were curved, so to extract them called for special
technique.
If I tell you that it
took us more than five painful minutes to extract the claws from my finger, and
that at one point he got Tisha with his other foot, I am not exaggerating. For a
minute, while we were both impaled by his claws, we thought we will never get
out of his grip. But then, little by little, we got free.
The photo shoot went
well and the hawk was modeling his best fierce, frightening poses. When we let
him go, he took off and flew as far away from the ranch as he could. Let’s hope
he doesn’t come back. But, for a good measure, I found some old mesh and
plugged up the remaining holes.
Certainly a very powerful, smart and dangerous bird, but also very
beautiful. And just a small advice for the future: if you are handling hawks,
make sure you have strong leather gloves and don’t touch the feet :NO!
Saludos y amor,
Carlos, Tisha and the Hawk
2 days later
PS:
Bonnie and Charles just sent this photo and according to them it is a juvenile Great Black Hawk. So, in my description of the three, this one and the big dark one are perhaps the same, only this guy is a juvenile.
2 days later
PS:
Bonnie and Charles just sent this photo and according to them it is a juvenile Great Black Hawk. So, in my description of the three, this one and the big dark one are perhaps the same, only this guy is a juvenile.
I wonder what would have happened if
my finger was grabbed by the daddy hawk!
Love,
CB
PS
The swelling is coming down and I
can bend the finger again.
