Flyaway (26 page)

The springtime birds began to trickle in. I brought the two redtails who had spent the winter in my flight to Paul's, where they spent a few weeks catching live mice in his far bigger flight in preparation for their release. Since they were young and had not yet established their own territory, Paul decided to release them both in the nature preserve adjoining the Green Chimneys School. A small group of us watched as the hawks were tossed into the air, one by one, and with clean, powerful strokes flew upward and away. I watched them go with exhilaration and regret. I had spent months appreciating the varied facets of their personalities, and the odds were I would never see them again; yet they were going home, back to where they were supposed to be.

I recorded a message on my phone machine saying I no longer took young songbirds, envisioning that the ensuing gaps in my schedule would be filled by the kids and puppy. Instantly the calls for every other kind of bird seemed to double. I juggled furiously, passing the names of other rehabbers on to callers, trying to figure out ways to streamline what was essentially an unstreamlineable process. My facilities weren't extensive enough to have separate, permanent areas for songbirds, raptors, and waterbirds, so when a new one arrived I usually had to struggle to shift crates and enclosures around. The logical thing for me to do would have been to narrow my bird focus yet again, but I had just abandoned the area's nestling songbirds and I was too guilt-ridden to turn my
back on yet another segment of the avian population. Instead I made do, sometimes ignoring the phone for several hours, hoping by the time I returned the call they would have found someone else, and at least able to say that I was no longer bound to a thirty-minute schedule.

The goshawks left the nest that had given them so much trouble and moved deeper into the woods. We could hardly remember a time before Merlin, who was so good-natured he wagged his tail in his sleep. My life balanced precariously between birds and family, with little time for anything else. “Don't you ever take time off?” asked our friends, whom we seldom saw except in passing.

“We have a goose here,” said Robin, calling from the Cortlandt Animal Hospital. “It's a…hold on…let me ask—what kind of goose is it again? It's an American brant. A woman named…let's see, Amanda Sewandowski…was driving down the road and saw this goose standing on the shoulder, and the guy in the car in front of her actually swerved so he could hit it. The poor woman—she slammed on her brakes in the middle of the road and jumped out of her car so she could rescue the goose. She said she was sure they were both going to end up like pancakes.”

The brant was a beautiful dark bird with a white chinstrap and white around her tail. I blocked off one corner of the shed with a metal dog pen, settled her on a towel-covered section of an egg-crate foam mattress, then hurried to my computer. “Help,” I wrote to my wildlife rehab electronic mailing list. “I don't know anything about brants!”

Within two hours there was an answer. “Hey, it's Wendi!” came the cheerful reply. “I can help you with your brant. I'm in Montana—call me!”

Wendi Schendel is my Internet friend who used to raise wood ducks and gave me all kinds of advice when we were caring for Daisy. As it turned out, she was also an expert on sea ducks and geese and had worked with many brants.

“She was on the side of the road and some savage deliberately ran her down,” I told her. “Nothing broken, but she's emaciated and really badly bruised.”

“Poor thing!” said Wendi. “Sounds like she was migrating and got all
skinny and exhausted. Sometimes they get disoriented—the roads can look like rivers if there's fog or the roads are icy. I'd say tube her for a couple of days, then get her on trout pellets and greens. These guys are not easy—they're really nervous. They tend to panic. Put up some curtains for her so she feels more secure. And call me back so you can tell me how she's doing!”

I draped dark blankets all around the brant's pen, hoping it would make her feel safer. She was scared to death of me, and every move she made was painful; immediately after she startled I could see her flinch. I tried never to look at her directly, and as often as possible turned my back to her. Trying to be solicitous of her frayed nerves, I avoided any sudden motions and instead moved slowly and fluidly, as if I were underwater. “The brant is teaching me Tai Chi,” I told John.

“Maybe I should do that with you,” said John.

The recovering goose responded, calming down and eating on her own. Although I was gratified by her progress, I began to awaken in the middle of each night and stare at the ceiling, unable to return to sleep. There were too
many things to think about: the birds who were going downhill, the ones who might not make it until morning, the ones who had suffered from the mistakes I had made. I lay awake thinking of the vulture found by the side of the train tracks, clinging to life despite broken bones and the gaping hole in his chest. The young peregrine hit by an airplane, his lower wing shredded, the jagged bones exposed. The cormorant with fishing line encircling and imbedded in his legs, the hook lodged deep in his abdomen.

American Brant

I tried to think of the man who had telephoned me and stayed by the vulture until I arrived. The people at the airport who found the peregrine and then spent more than an hour on the phone, looking for help. The three guys out in a fishing boat on the Hudson, who had cut their trip short when they found the cormorant so they could hurry him to the vet.

I tried to think of them, but my mind veered away, focusing instead on the teenager who deliberately ran a Canada goose down with his jet ski. The developer who threatened to sue if he couldn't destroy a pristine wetland. The latest assault on the Endangered Species Act.
How can wildlife survive?
I thought.
How do any of them stand a chance?

 

During the next three years Merlin grew into a 115-pound dog with a deep bark and a fondness for footwear. He always believed he was hungry, even if he had just eaten, and occasionally he would lose control and scarf down one of the kids' socks. After the first panic-stricken rush to the vet I started stocking up on cat hairball remedy, an entire tube of which could usually grease Merlin's insides enough to allow him to pass the sock, the very idea of which would send the kids into paroxysms of dismay. He had a bullwhip of a tail that could clear a coffee table, inflict an actual bruise, or tow a child all the way around Sunny Pond. He was the best-natured dog any of us had ever encountered, and we never stopped feeling lucky to have him as part of our family.

After several guitar teachers had to abandon their lessons in favor of other
work, Mac found Jake Harms, a fourteen-year-old prodigy who ratcheted up Mac's already formidable enthusiasm several notches. Mac found a bass player and a drummer and formed a band, playing White Stripes's “Seven Nation Army” for their first gig, the school talent show. Mac aced his solo—at least, the audience thought he did—and the band received a standing ovation. But later that night I found him in his room, slumped in his chair.

“I didn't ace my solo,” he said. “Didn't you hear the second verse? I messed it up.”

“Are you kidding?” I cried. “I've been listening to you practice for weeks and I didn't hear anything wrong!”

He stared miserably out the window. “I can't play like Jimmy Page,” he said.

“Mac,” I said, pulling up a chair. “You're eleven years old. Jimmy Page couldn't play like Jimmy Page when he was eleven. Give yourself a chance.”

“I messed it up,” he said.

“Don't do this to yourself,” I said. “You're a really, really good guitar player.”

Skye held on to Marigoldy, even after she figured out that her mother was actually writing the notes. I presented her with a shoe box filled with the letters she had written to various fairies, which she placed on her shelf next to her own carefully hoarded box of fairy responses. Every once in a while she would sigh wistfully and say, “I wish Marigoldy would write me another note,” and in the morning it would appear, tucked beneath her pillow.

She took several local digital photography classes and learned how to manipulate color and shading, then joined a monitored Internet photography club where young photographers shared their pictures and exchanged comments. She carried her camera everywhere, pulling it out when she found a striking image or when a new situation made her feel awkward. Trying to find our way to the Brooklyn Museum one Sunday, we gave up deciphering the subway map and asked a young woman how to get there. “We're going to see the Annie Leibovitz exhibit,” said Skye.

“So am I!” said the woman.

“You're not a photographer by any chance, are you?” I asked.

“Sure am,” she replied.

Soon we were sharing a subway seat and chatting about cameras, photography courses, and what it was like to be a professional photographer. “Let's move to New York City!” said Skye later.

During the day I was thrilled by their interests. But in the middle of the night, sandwiched between thoughts of the day's patients, came pinpricks of realization: my kids were slowly starting to move away from me. Had they been songbirds, they would have been determinedly hopping in and out of the nest, wanting to explore, to make their own decisions. These were all milestones to celebrate. But I knew what came next.

John began a new book. He traveled, interviewed people, and attended seminars and conferences, returning relaxed and invigorated, filled with stories and new ideas. He was never sure what he was returning to, however. Sometimes he would find me celebratory, after a bird I was sure was a goner had essentially risen from the dead. Other times he would find me edgy and knotted, when the losses that I tried to force from my mind kept rising to the surface.

“That new crow has pox,” I said to him once, distraught, sure that she had somehow infected my four fledglings. John nodded and started to leave the room.

“Thanks a lot for the sympathy,” I said sarcastically.

“Sympathy!” he said. “I'm sick of giving you sympathy! You're always upset about something, there's always some bird crisis going on! How much more sympathy do you want?”

I had long talks with Wendi Schendel, who not only helped me through rehabbing the brant but found a sanctuary where she could be with other geese before she was released. “You're too isolated,” said Wendi. “You don't have any downtime and you don't have any help. Believe me, I know—I went through this myself. You need to specialize; you can't keep taking all these different species, given the way you're set up.”

“I know,” I said. “It's just so hard. People call me on the phone, they appear at my house….”

“You have to tell some of them no,” said Wendi.

“I can't!” I said.

“Then you need to shut down for a while,” said Wendi firmly. “You're burning out.”

At least I could still mock myself. After a particularly trying day I would grab a beer, put a CD on the stereo, and with Mario perched on my hand, lean against the counter in the kitchen. As the mournful, three-note bass riff began, Mario and I listened to R. L. Burnside murmur his weary way through “Bad Luck City." We shifted from side to side, slowly nodding our heads to the music, as if we'd both been ridin' that downbound train way too long.

When I sliced defrosted rodents into tiny pieces or cleaned out the mealworm tank I occasionally thought about what I would be doing had I been a more obedient daughter: relaxing on the yacht club porch, wearing crisp white linen, and drinking iced Southsides. I tried to juxtapose the two lives and envisioned myself peering through designer eyeglasses at a letter:

I continued to try to pass birds along to others. I drove orphaned raptors to the Raptor Trust, in Millington, New Jersey, a renowned wild bird rehabilitation center founded and run by Len and Diane Soucy. Advocates for birds of prey for thirty years, the Soucys have expanded their original backyard op
eration into a center with a state-of-the-art hospital, an education building, an enviable collection of outdoor raptor housing, and paid staff members who are compassionate and skilled. They have surrogate parents of many species, allowing orphans to grow up under the tutelage of adult raptors instead of humans.

The Raptor Trust is ninety minutes in one direction, Jayne is ninety minutes in the other. I sent a few orphans and some adult songbirds to Jayne, who was always willing to take them as long as they were delivered and fit within her species boundaries.