Just a story

Nothing political - just a story.

Last night I was cleaning the bathroom of our house because we listed our home for sale. We actually listed it yesterday, and the same day someone expressed interest in seeing the house, so I was doing some last-minute scrubbing of the shower. Wendy, Maxine and Huck were taking a walk. It was around 7 p.m. or so.

As I was scrubbing, I heard Isabella, our African Grey parrot making a racket. She has a particular highly-agitated call she makes that expresses fear or excitement. Normally she does it when she gets a toenail stuck in her rope swing or something. So I went to check on her, and sitting on the floor of our kitchen right below Isabella's cage was a hawk. A big(ish) hawk just standing there. It had just landed on the floor after dropping off Isabella's cage when I walked in. She (I have no idea if it was male or female, but I'm calling her a girl) just turned and calmly looked at me. I was stunned. Not what you expect to see in your kitchen. I actually said out-loud, "What the hell are you doing here?" She was totally calm and unperturbed by me.

I leapt into action - closing the door to Maxine's room, closing the door to our bedroom, grabbed a broom, and taped a towel over the opening to the living room (as there is no door there to close.) This limited where she could go and left only the door outside open. If you've been to my house, you know there is a little jog to get from the back door to the kitchen, so she had to have flown in the back door (that was standing open) and around the corner and into the kitchen. She must have heard Isabella and thought there was an easy snack available.

Luckily, Isabella's cage doors were closed, so the hawk couldn't get in. She was scared, but not overly freaked out. Obviously when Isabella had been screaming, the hawk was grabbing at the cage.

So once I got the hawk limited to the kitchen, I put on some leather work gloves and grabbed the broom, and started to shoo her toward the back door. She fluttered around the cage, freaking out Isabella again, then flew to the back door. After a little confusion with the mirror, she flew outside and sat on our gate.

By this time I could tell she was young. Probably just a few months old. She was gorgeous, and still not scared of me. Big clear bluish-yellow eyes, and bright yellow feet with three toes in the front with one in back. Long, thin, black talons. Long yellow beak tipped in black. Brown feathers with striped tail feathers like a turkey. White chest with brown spots. Her feathers were ruffled, but like a baby bird, not like she was dirty or sick. She was just sitting on our fence, and I walked over and stood right next to her. I mean inches from her. She just looked at me expectantly. So I went inside and got her a piece of smoked turkey sandwich meat. I dropped it on the ground OUTSIDE the gate into the driveway, and she dropped down on top of it like it was prey. She covered it with her wings and stepped on it to protect it, and then stood there eating it. I opened the gate and squatted next to her and watched her. I was within inches of her the whole time.

Eventually, I picked up some of the bigger pieces of turkey she had missed, and invited her over. She jumped up on my hand and ate the turkey from my hand! I actually held her for a few minutes. I fully expected to get cut by her obviously sharp claws, or bit, but she was very gentle, relatively speaking. Not a scratch. She got a little excited when I picked her up and her claw got hooked in my glove, but she got free quickly and settled back down on the ground next to me.

She hung out for a long time - Wendy came home and had to walk around the block again to keep Huck and the baby away. She settled on the neighbor's roof for a while. Wendy had seen her earlier on her walk in the next block and remarked about how close the bird let her get.

So I looked it up online, and she is a Cooper's Hawk. That's what the picture is of. She looked just like that. I got some pictures of her on the roof, and I'll post those later.

I've been saying I wanted to get closer to nature, and it came closer to me.