I try to leave myself open to moments of happiness when I find them - like my little blue flower, or even the laughable pile of stuff from the poltergeist.
And I got a good one a couple of days ago.
I was at the museum, starting to clean one of the aviaries. There was a hawk standing in the water dish. We have two redtails in the aviary - Tony and Riley Hawk (yes, we went there). But I realized that this one was too big - and suddenly I involuntarily gave a little cry of delight. "Ella!" My beautiful Ella. She let me walk up to her, but I didn't try to touch her.
Ella and I go back 10 years, to the spring of 2013. We had gotten her from rehabbers, who cared for her after she got hit by a car. She was too damaged (wing, eye, and nerve damage) to go back to the wild, so we were going to use her for an education bird. Everyone was rather busy at the time, so I was asked to glove train her.
I had handled owls and a hawk before, but never a wild one. You just have to take a lot of baby steps, getting her used to you being near her, touching her, getting her to step on a glove. Very carefully, because redtails have some serious talons.
She could not have come into my life at a better time. My mother had died the previous December (on my birthday). I was trying to get her estate and paperwork done (Dad was too grief stricken). Then Dad fell and broke his ribs, had to move to the nursing home, and I had to clean out their apartment. And I was still teaching at the time, but the department was starting to have some problems, professors bailing out, and I was assigned classes I had no business teaching - much stress there.
But when you walk into the cage with an untrained wild hawk who could seriously damage you - you go zen. Check everything at the door. It's just you and the bird. That was the one hour or so out of the day that I could turn off my racing brain. I would teach, then go visit Dad at the nursing home, and then come to the museum (by now after closing hours, so I was alone) and just be with Ella.
Sometimes I'd take her for a walk on the boardwalk by the lake. That bird saved my sanity.
That August, for our anniversary - I opened the box from Bob, and he had gotten me a beautiful sage green leather falconer's glove of my own. I cried a bit.
At that time, I was the only one who handled her, so I was the one who was called when a commercial was being made about saving the Everglades, the spokesman being Jim Fowler. That Jim Fowler. Of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. One of my childhood heroes. I would be glued to the TV while Marlon Perkin stayed safely in the tent and narrated while Jim Fowler wrestled the anaconda or whatever. Jim wanted to be able to hold a hawk while he talked - so I got to be his hawk wrangler.
But maybe because of her accident, Ella developed a lot of health problems. Fatty liver syndrome. She had a prolapse. And developed bumblefoot in both feet that resisted treatment (even though she was *very* good about having her feet handled). For the last two years she's been living in quarantine in the kitchen area.
I didn't know she was declared healthy enough to go into the aviary (not back to education - being handled would cause stress and possibly problems again). But here she was, in this huge beautiful aviary. And I just didn't bother cleaning for a little while - like in the old days, I just went zen with her.
I always knew that the love and the bond was unidirectional. I tried to explain that to a woman one time who was enthralled with her (it was an unexpected sighting - we had gone to a bank to accept one of those big donation checks and taken a few animals with us). But she kept saying "Oh, I can see how much she loves you." And I tried to explain that no - she tolerated me. "Oh, but she keeps her head turned to yo all the time." Again - that's because her near eye is blind and she wants to keep her good eye on me.
I'll likely never handle her again. But that's OK. I can see her, and see her finally living her best life. And it makes me happy.
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