Author: Tim Gels

The final time we handled him, we needed gloves.  That was a good sign; that was a very good sign.

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As coincidence would have it, I was “in town” when I got a message from Curt, a friend who runs RISE Raptor Project, a small non-profit I work with here in North Alabama.   

Someone found what they thought was a red-tailed hawk.  It was on the ground alive, but not moving.  Would we come and get it?

RISE provides conservation education as we teach about our birds in public presentations, oftentimes in schools and libraries in the area, but also at a variety of other events.  We’re not a rehab organization, but we occasionally get calls when folks find large birds in distress.  “Don’t try this at home,” definitely applies when you’re working with the talons and beaks found on a bird of prey.

Those talons and beak were at the forefront of my mind when I was contacted.  Normally, birds on the ground are approached with heavy leather gloves and something like a large towel.  I had neither, and was dressed in shorts, a t-shirt, and sandals.  I did, however, have two small towels which happened to be in the car.  The bird was two miles south of where I was, and my gloves were 10 miles north, definitely out of town.  I headed south.

The good and bad news, I learned during a call as I was driving, was that the bird was apparently already in a cardboard box.  It was good the capture wouldn’t even have to take place, but that the bird was put into a cardboard box by an untrained and inexperienced person indicated it had to be in pretty bad shape.

And it was.  

This story gets better, but when I found the bird, it was in a box that wasn’t even closed.  It was on its side, and the finder had placed a table cloth over it to keep the flies out.  The hawk–indeed, it was a juvenile red-tailed hawk–had its eyes closed, its wings tucked back, and its feet tucked up.  There was some apparent respiration, though, so I closed the box, returned the table cloth, and put the box into the back of my car.

Okay, here’s the deal: When a bird, especially a bird of prey, is in need of “rescue,” it’s usually bad.  As often as not, in my experience (albeit only a few years), the bird simply isn’t going to make it.  I hate that, but it’s the truth.  Now, that doesn’t mean they won’t make it–they sometimes do–but that didn’t look to be the case at the time.  

Before I left the neighborhood where I picked him up, I wanted to make sure the bird was upright, so I reached in the box to rearrange the towels and prop him (probably a him, based on the size) up.

Though I didn’t know at the time, the bird was experiencing paralysis caused by something unknown, probably an ingested poison.  He couldn’t move, his wings and those formidable talons remained tucked, but imagine my thrill as his eye suddenly opened at my touch.  Cloud grey with streaks of black, the iris shrunk as the pupil quickly expanded to bring my face into focus from two feet away.  His body didn’t move, but I did, and it was a good few seconds before I knew I could get him settled.

After getting him into what I thought was a good position, I headed back to see what we could do for him.  Our treatment capability is limited, so we simply gave him fluids (pedialyte with a nutrient powder mixed in) a few times, and kept him in a safe place until we could transport him the next day.  As with all animals, hydration is more important than feeding, and his mutes (excrement) showed that he’d been eating well.

The first time we handled him, he was unable to move his legs or wings.  His situation didn’t require much in the way of protective equipment to handle him.  But by the next day he was starting to gain some mobility, and when I got him on his way to the Southeastern Raptor Center at Auburn University he could move enough to warrant gloves–a positive sign.

The story isn’t over, but our part is finished.  With a lot of luck, that hawk will once again take its place in the skies of Alabama.

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Coda: The situation doesn’t warrant testing to determine what specifically caused this bird’s poisoning.  As of now, the diagnosis is, “suspected toxin exposure.”  Most likely, in my opinion, he ate a small mammal (mouse or rat) that had ingested poisoned bait.  No one likes unwanted rodents, but if you find yourself with that problem, please consider using traps instead of poison.  Secondary exposure to rodent poison kills many birds of prey each year.

Here are some links you might find interesting: RISE Raptor project at http://riseraptor.org and the Southeastern Raptor Center at https://www.vetmed.auburn.edu/raptor/

For the past 14 years or so, as I understand it, the great folks of twowritingteachers.org have hosted a writing challenge they call “Slice of Life.”  Every March, teacher-writers (most of the participants are teachers or have been teachers) are encouraged to write and post a narrative about a “small” subject–a slice of life–every day.  For the other 11 months of the year, it’s just on Tuesdays. I’m doing my best to maintain the writing habit, not missing a day over the last three months.

It’s Tuesday morning, and the cursor is still blinking.

Last week, I learned how to write the script for, shoot the video of, and edit the footage for a “virtual hike” on a local Land Trust property.  That’s worth a slice, certainly.  But it doesn’t really seem important today.  My county has lost over 105,000 people to COVID-19 in the same three months I’ve been writing.  The world has lost nearly 400,000.  Well over six million people experienced the virus.

My wife has been putting in a wonderful garden, and I’ve done a little bit of the work (but not much).  The evenings outside would make a wonderful slice.  It’s hard to share that, though, when my country–our country–has allowed public health to be politicized.  Wearing a cloth face covering as encouraged by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDE) is apparently for liberals and wimps. Seeking to protect yourself and others is now a statement.

I’ve been building a bookshelf, and while doing so have relearned a technique for joining wood.  That relearning is sort of a funny story, in a way, and I know I could write a humorous slice about it.  But our country is reeling under righteous protest and unrighteous violence after the routinely horrific death of George Floyd, a man who suffocated under the knee of a police officer who gave an oath to protect and serve his community.

Last night, here in the state of Alabama, I experienced a unique kind of history being made as a monument to the Confederacy was removed from a park in Birmingham.  I watched on my phone as the crane moved into position and the monument was dismantled.  I’m not sure how I’d have written that slice.  I’ve lived in Alabama for 20 years now, but I don’t have the experience to understand the feelings (both for and against) people have for that statue and many others like it; I respect the sincere views they hold, regardless of my own opinion. 

I would have wanted to see what I could do with it, though, but any attempt to reflect on that event is overshadowed by yesterday’s words and events from this great nation’s capital.  The Secretary of Defense used the term “battle space” to refer to the cities of The United States of America.  “Battle Space.”  The Insurrection Act is being encouraged by some who hold high positions in our federal government. Near the White House, law enforcement officers used tear gas, concussion grenades, and rubber bullets to remove lawfully-assembled protestors from the area around St. John’s Episcopal Church.  They did so to allow the president of the United States to walk there for photos. 

In so many ways, Rome is burning.

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Next week I’ll write again, and I’ll do my best to share something positive.  For this week, though, this is all I’ve got.

“If I look at it long enough, I’ll figure it out.”  That was the thought that went through my mind, anyway.  

I sat just a bit longer, staring at the sewing machine.  I looked down at the spool of thread, then placed it on the pin that I knew was there to hold it.  Going with the obvious, I slid on the disc of plastic that holds the spool in place.

It had been a while since I’d sat before this sewing machine, but I’ve done so many times in the past.  It’s been a while, though.  I knew how to thread it, but I didn’t know how to thread it.

So, as I understand it, the route thread takes through a sewing machine is designed primarily to let it leave the spool with an appropriate amount of tension.  It leaves the spool, goes over the river and through the woods, all on the way to the eye in the end of the needle.  It’s the river and woods part that’s tricky.

Muscle memory.  That’s the ticket.  Without a lot of thought, I pulled the thread under the first metal thingy and over the next.  It looked like that nearby slot was a good place to pull through, so through it I went, pulling down, around the tensioner gadget, back up through the same slot, and into the metal wire that was fortunately resting in a position where it was visible.

I had this.

I pulled back down, past the metal bar, and–I was seriously surprised at this–through the wire guide that I just knew sat behind the needle holder.  After I did so, I actually looked to make sure it was there.  Yes, it was.  Wow.  After that, it was a simple matter of threading the needle.  Always start with thread that’s freshly cut.  It’s a lot easier that way.  

Boom.  It’s the little things.

Believe it or not, putting the bobbin in was even easier.  Incredible.

Like so many do-it-yourselfers these days, I was making a face mask.  I try not to dwell on that too much, but making a face mask I was.  I was making that first one for myself, since I figured making a larger one would be easier than making the significantly smaller one that would fit my wife.  I know we’ll be getting a lot of use out of them, so we want several on hand.

I know I learned many things when I was in high school all those years ago, but the two I’m most thankful for are how to sew, and how to type.  Those classes, plus growing up in a family of makers, gave me skills that have served me well. 

I do enjoy sewing, and making things in general.  I just wish I didn’t need the sewing thing for a time like this.

“Okay, I need you to hold this end of the tape measure right here; right here on this mark.  While you hold that, I’m going to stretch it out and we’ll see how many inches it is to that mark over there.”

As I set the tape measure down on the block of wood I had put in place a moment ago, I said, “Okay, now come down here and let’s see how many inches it shows.”

As my six-year-old granddaughter moved with a bit of swagger in her little step to where I was standing, I quickly moved to her previous location and put the tape back on the mark.  She was close, but still…  I moved back to where I started and we both looked down at the markings on the ruler.

“Okay, what number is that?”

She looked.  I looked.  She continued to look.  I waited until the point of frustration, then prompted, “What’s the first number?”

“One.”

“What’s the second?”

“Zero.”

“And the third?”

“Three,” she said.  Then, seconds later, “One hundred and three!”

“High five!” I exclaimed, as her face, broad with a smile, looked up at me. “That’s right, one hundred three,” I told her.  “That’s exactly what we wanted it to be!”  

My oldest granddaughter and I, with a little help from my long-deceased friend Pythagoras, were checking to make sure the corner of the wall for the catio I was building was square.

No, she doesn’t have a clue what the Pythagorean theorem is, and no, she doesn’t fully comprehend what 103 inches means.  She is, however, beginning to understand she can use that long springy thing to measure how far away something is.  I’ll take that for now, and later we’ll work on the rest.  And don’t worry, we’ll wait until at least the second grade before we start with power tools!

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An aside: A “catio,” in case you didn’t know, is basically a fenced room on one’s deck or porch.  Yes, it’s for the cats.  Do my daughter and her husband spoil their cats?  Ya think?