Imagine one hawk flying crazily in the kitchen with five screaming girls freaking out about it... one in tears...
but I get ahead of myself.
I wasn't actually at home for the first half of this adventure so I'll have to tell it to you the way it was told to me.
It started with this picture text from The Man:
"I was getting into the shower when these two birds crashed into the window. Scared the heck out of me. One's still breathing but not moving. Not sure what to do with it."
To which I replied via text, "Oh wow. Is this one of those things where we have to bring it in the house with a box nest?"
Let me interject here that I was only kidding.
"I'm going to nudge it if it doesn't move I'll have to finish it I guess."
"Ew gross."
"It's looking at me. Grrrr."
"I'm trying to pick it up but it's holding onto the ground."
"It knows you're going to kill it."
"Not yet. I was trying to see if it could move."
"Tayler says we should call FedEx."
"I tried your box idea. I should have closed the box."
"Maybe I should have said that the box idea only works if they're hurt and can't fly."
"I thought it couldn't. It didn't move at all except to hold the ground when I picked it up."
"It's a hawk. I looked it up."
"Are you serious?"
"Yep. I'm certain. The picture matched perfectly."
"Oh geez. Is it still in the house?"
"Yep."
At this point The Man posts on facebook, "Does anybody have a fishing net or butterfly net I can borrow? ASAP."
Insert mental image here...
"Kaye Lynn says to call Tracy Aviary."
"I just need to get it outside."
"Right. They can come and get it."
"It tried flying. It wasn't successful."
I found out later that West had tried to go up and actually take his shower at that point, telling The Circus not to worry about it, it wasn't going anywhere. As life goes, as soon as he gets upstairs it starts flying around. And girls start screaming bloody murder.
And there were tears.
"What the... is it breathing?"
"Yes."
"Man that bird is having a bad day."
After laughing hysterically about this with my co-workers I head home.
I walk into the house from the garage door to see this blocking my path:
And I have to admit that I freaked out inside just like The Circus. What if it freaked out on me when I stepped over it? Finally I was able to force myself to step over it, as it glared at me with it's angry hawk eye.
I looked up the website for Tracy Aviary and found that they don't actually take wild birds because of quarantining, but was able to get the phone number for Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah, who does take them.
"Hi. I have a hurt hawk in my house..." Followed by an "Oh!" and a burst of laughter with, "that's a first!"
So West gently picked the poor thing up,
and went to put it in the same box that brought it into the house, but realized we should probably learn the lesson that it can fly out of the box and did we really want that happening in our car?
Insert mental image here.
So we put a blanket in our dog carrier instead.
We took the hour drive up to Ogden, where two ladies stayed late to wait for us, and one put on the huge leather gloves (please note that West used only paper towels in the picture above) and reached in and... the poor thing had died on the way.
We learned that a bird's trachea is the back of their tongue, and she could see a lot of blood coming from it. Which meant that there was significant internal bleeding.
We also learned that it was a Cooper's hawk. They hide in the trees until a prey comes along, and then the tactic is to chase them into something to kill it, like, oh, say our house. But this guy didn't pull out of the chase fast enough, or as West imagines it, was fighting with it mid-flight, so he hit the house too.
At least he's not hurting and West didn't have to get the shovel.
My conscience is clear.
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