Flyaway (22 page)

Wild hawks can't order room service. Their dinner is usually racing away from them as fast as it can, and a split second can mean the difference between a fine meal and no meal at all. It's easy to see why a raptor might overindulge, especially if it had been a lean few days.

“It's the Flyaway version of
La Grande Bouffe
!” I said to John. “Remember that movie? With Marcello Mastroianni?”

“The one where four guys decide to eat themselves to death?” he said. “Right! Back then it was social satire. Now they've remade it as
Super Size Me
and it's a documentary.”

I kept the hawk until late afternoon to give Karen time to raptor-proof her chicken pen. Later I drove the recently christened Marcella to a sunny hill overlooking a field dotted with Black Angus, a mile or so from the Parks's house. As I opened the carrier door, the big redtail glared at me.

“Essere attento, bella,
” I said. “Stay away from chicken pens.”

I moved away from the door, and she bolted out and up into a huge old sycamore tree. She took in her surroundings and rattled her feathers, as if shaking off the shackles of her brief captivity. Easing off the branch she flew lazily due east, straight back toward the land of the easy pickings.

“You'd better sit down,” I said to Ed, “because I'm about to let somebody have it, and you had the bad luck to answer your phone.”

“Oh, dear,” said Ed. “Sounds like trouble in paradise.”

I started right in. There were the last three callers, all of whom had found baby birds and decided to let their kids raise them—at least, until it was obvious that the nestlings were at death's door, which was when they brought them to me. There was the woman who let her daughter keep an injured pigeon in a bare box without food or water for four days because she had been “far too busy” to find it help. There was the man who called from his house an hour and a half away and demanded that I drive over immediately and retrieve the injured hawk in his yard, otherwise he would “get out his gun and shoot the damned thing.” I ranted on and on about the stupidity, the callousness, and the treachery of the entire human race, myself included, until I ran out of breath. There was a moment of silence.

“Well,” said Ed solemnly, “that will teach me to answer my telephone.”

Once again, Ed talked me down. “First things first,” he said. “You must keep in mind the species with which you are dealing. As Anthony Burgess said, ‘Human beings…unsatisfactory hybrids, not good enough for gods and not good enough for animals.' No need to elaborate.

“However, do keep in mind all of the people who dropped what they were
doing and went far out of their way to find help for an injured bird. All the people who managed to locate your house, which I can attest is in the middle of nowhere, and who called repeatedly to find out how the bird was faring. All the people who have donated money to your cause. And—most important—remember that one particularly noble soul who manages, time and again, to calm you down when you call him cursing and shouting, or write him entire e-mails using nothing but capital letters.”

After Ed had whittled my stress down to a more manageable level I hung up the phone and sat in the kitchen, staring blankly into space. John walked through the door, stopped, and frowned at the sight of the large female mallard sitting under my chair. The mallard stood up, gave him an appraising glance, then sauntered past him and into the living room. After giving her tail a friendly wag she settled down between the kids, who were watching TV.

“Damn!” I said, slapping my hand against my forehead. “Here I have this big therapy session with Ed and I forget to bring up Danielle!”

“Danielle?” said John. “Is
Danielle
housebroken, by any chance?”

“No,” called Mac indignantly. “That's why the lady kicked her out.”

“And that's why,” finished Skye with a sunny smile, “she's going to live with us.”

Danielle had been found as a tiny duckling by a woman who brought her home, lavished attention and affection on her, and kept her in the house. When the duck was almost full size, the woman decided that since her housebreaking methods were not working, it was time for the duck to go. Of course, by this time the supposedly wild duck was completely imprinted and had never seen another duck.

I had made a half-hearted attempt to put Danielle in the shed, but I felt as if I were throwing a formerly pampered pet into a pound. “Look at her,” I said mournfully to John, as Danielle waddled up and dabbled his pant leg with her beak. “It's not her fault she thinks she's a poodle! Okay, she might be a little messy, but just give me a couple of days until I can find her a good home.”

“A little messy!” John exclaimed. “A full-grown duck? What are you going to have living in here next—a swan?”

“But Danielle is a special case, and she's very short-term!” I said. “She can spend most of the day outside, and I'll put her in a crate at night. She just needs a few hours a day of human interaction!”

“She just needs human interaction!” chorused the kids.

“Right,” said John. “We certainly can't have the duck going cold turkey.”

Ponie arrived on Saturday morning, carrying a tin of homemade cookies and wearing a huge grin. “I'm so excited!” she said giddily when John opened the door. “The goose is all better and going home! Isn't that the coolest thing?”

“It's very cool,” John agreed. “Come on in. Don't trip over the duck.”

Ponie followed me out to the shed, where she gathered up her goose and carried her to a waiting box in the back of her car. “You saved her life,” she said. “I love what you do. Do you need a volunteer? If you need help I could come after work during the week, or for a few hours on weekends. I'll help you any way I can.”

After she left, I wandered out to the flight. People always asked why I didn't have volunteers to help me. I certainly needed a break: when the kids were safely at camp there were times I simply burst into tears from sheer exhaustion. But coordinating volunteers would mean adding another layer of work, another level of responsibility. Ponie would be the volunteer from heaven: compassionate, inspired, easy to be around. But she could come only at 6
P.M
. on weekdays—when most of the bird work was done and I was trying to concentrate on my family—or on weekends, which were a hectic blend of bird care and kids' activities. What if Ponie was scheduled to arrive just when the last nestling had been fed, I had already cleaned the crates, and I had a perfect half hour to play a game with the kids?

I was too tired. I couldn't figure out how to do it.

I reached the first flight cage. This particular group of songbirds consisted of three robins, a Carolina wren, two mourning doves, a northern waterthrush,
the formerly glued house sparrow, and a white-breasted nuthatch. When I walked through the door the songbirds either froze or hid; all but the little nuthatch, who gazed at me from a dead limb, hopped onto one of the mesh-covered sides of the flight cage, then without hesitation kept going, creeping along the ceiling upside down until he was a few feet away.

“
Henk, henk
,” he said.

“
Henk, henk
,” I replied.

I opened the side door and entered the crow flight, closing the door carefully behind me. I had taken many of the smaller branches out, leaving the crows with more space in which to fly and solid branches on which to land. The enclosure was filled with all kinds of natural toys and a huge outdoor plant saucer for water. I sat down on a log and Nacho coasted down from a perch and landed beside me. When I picked up an acorn and tossed it into the water dish, he hopped after it, plucked it out, tossed it aside, then crouched down and began splashing energetically. Perhaps sensing a potential water fight, Lo and Behold left their perches and crowded around the dish.

Although they were still comfortable around me, Lo and Behold had stopped actively seeking physical contact and interaction, as is the norm when young crows are put into a flight cage before their release. Nacho, however, continued to be as easygoing as Erin had first described him. He had a solid bond with the other two crows, but was happy to follow me around the flight cage, offer me toys, and yank at my shoelaces; in turn I was happy to bring him extra crickets, toss him grass stalks, and give him the occasional head massage. I kept pulling myself back from the edge of infatuation, glad that I had only a limited amount of time to spend with him.

As I rose to leave I noticed that one of the knots holding a perch, a tree limb suspended from the ceiling by two heavy ropes, was becoming loose. I stood in front of the knot, which was about the height of my shoulder, and untied it, supporting the limb with my arm. As I began to retie it, Nacho flew over and landed on the limb, then sidled over to where I stood. “Silly bird,” I said, my hands occupied.

Reaching over, he touched my cheek with his beak. I stopped. Slowly and carefully he traced the contours of my face, delicately, like a blind person. He gently grasped a lock of my hair, separated it into two strands, and let it go.

After I left the flight cage I stood briefly outside the clinic, overcome by something close to despair. People shoot crows for fun, I thought. How can I make them understand?

I took a few deep breaths. I had to check the birds in the clinic, feed and pack up the nestlings, and take the kids swimming. There was no time for this. You bonehead, said my practical side, get ahold of yourself. The damned crow could have poked your eye out.

At the pool we raced each other underwater, then the kids joined their friends while I watched. Neither complained about the nestling birds who had come to rule our summer lives, but I didn't know whether that was due to the adaptability of children or a buried resentment eventually sure to surface. I thought of Mac, perfectly still, Danielle drowsing contentedly on his lap; I thought of Skye, feeding nestlings, then speeding around the house for an hour to offset her ten minutes of suppressed activity.

My feelings of guilt were complicated. I was a working mother with no salary. I was always home but always busy. I worked days, nights, and weekends. John was supportive and interested, but was becoming increasingly exasperated with my unending workload. Was I asking too much of him? Was I giving my kids something valuable, or was I simply being selfish and catering to my own obsessions?

After dinner we all climbed onto the couch to watch a rented movie. Sometime later I felt Skye shaking me. “Mommy! Wake up! Have you been asleep this whole time?”

“I'm here,” I said groggily. “I'm awake!”

“Do you know what's going on?” asked Mac, leaving me wondering how many ways he intended his question to be taken.

After the kids went to bed, I sat down with John. “I don't have an answer for you,” he said. “What you do is amazing, and I think it's great for the kids—to
a point. Sometimes you're so stressed out that I worry about you. You don't ever get a break.”

Baltimore Oriole

He rose and walked to the front door to turn off the light. “What's this?” he asked, looking through one of the small, narrow windows flanking the door. He stepped outside and picked up a cardboard box with six or eight small holes in the top and brought it inside.

“I rest my case,” he said.

I pulled the note off the cardboard box. “My cat caught this bird,” I read through clenched teeth. “Please help him.”

It was a Baltimore oriole, a blaze of orange and black against a dirty white cloth. There was a dime-size hole in the base of his neck. One wing was shredded. His back was broken.

I put the box down gently on the table. “Dammit!” I cried. “They can't even knock on the door! They leave him and run!”

“Look at the handwriting,” said John. “It's probably some teenaged girl.”

“I don't care,” I said viciously. “I hate her! I hate all these people and their goddamned cats!”

“I know,” said John.

“Can you imagine what kind of pain he's in?” I said, blinking back tears. “I can't leave him like this.”

I picked up the box, took a flashlight from the kitchen, stuck it in my back pocket, and went out the garage door, grabbing the shovel on the way. I walked into the moonlit woods, balanced the flashlight on a rotting log, and laid the gasping bird gently on a bed of leaves. “I'm so sorry,” I whispered and brought the shovel down, my eyes streaming, hot fury burning through my stomach. Moonlight turned the forest floor silver. The flashlight illuminated a small, brilliant spot of orange.

“Are you okay?” said John, when I returned to the house.

“I'm fine,” I said. “But I can't sleep. I'll be in later.”

I filled a glass with vodka and ice and turned on the stereo. I flipped off the lights and closed my eyes, trying to think of nothing but the hoarse, rich sound of Herbie Mann's bass flute as it curled through the headphones, waiting for Cissy Houston's smoky, powerful voice to sing the blues.

Time flew toward the summer sky. The small spot of orange became a string of orange lights draped festively around my flight cage, shining into the darkness. The roof opened and fireworks shot straight up into the night and fell as birds, swooping upward before they reached the earth. The string of lights turned into a flock of orioles. And in place of the sound of explosives was a voice so beautiful it could ease a troubled mind and wash it all away. Like rain.