kalakal shared a lovely story with me earlier, and I asked if we could share it with all of you. Dog knows we can all use a
palletpalate cleanser after talking about the maladministration earlier in the day. (fucking autocorrect!)
kalakal’s story
One thing that helps me get through these troubled days is meeting people who are making the world a better place rather than spreading spite and malice.
Yesterday as I stepped out the door to go to work the first thing I saw was a bedraggled clump of feathers on the ground, which I took to be a dead bird. At which point it raised up it’s head, struggled to its feet, pointed an impressively hooked beak at me and shrieked. Alert as ever first thing in the morning I quickly realised this was not a dead bird but rather a large raptors baby.
After checking that momma wasn’t around I took a closer look, it seemed healthy except for a bleeding wound around its right ear but was very young, about the size of a 3 month kitten, still with baby feathers. Now I couldn’t just leave it, don’t know how to care for it, so I fired up my Librarian super power and looked for someone who could.
I found a nearby Raptor Rescue Center and spoke to a very nice lady who said she was just on her way taking an injured squirrel to the vet but could be with me in an hour. I stood guard over the poor little chap/chapess (Hawk sexing is not taught in library school) near enough to stop any cat/dog /raccoon/ hawk etc from getting ideas but far away enough that the poor thing wasn’t shrieking in panic.
An hour later the lady arrives, explains she’s the volunteer rescuer, puts on some big gloves and heads for the hawk.
The poor thing scuttles into the corner of the porch, trying to tuck its head into the wall, for all the world like a little kid doing “If I can’t see you, you can’t see me” , utter cute overload. She picks it up, gives it a check over, announces it is a Red Shouldered Hawk, and that she’ll take it home to rear it until it can be released as it should make a full recovery, unlike the other Red Shouldered Hawk chick she’s looking after which will probably have to stay in the sanctuary.
Meanwhile the chick is quietly sitting in her hands doing gentle head bumps on her forearm. Chick goes in a car carrier, we exchange numbers so we can keep up to date on the chicks progress, and off she goes.
I go to work feeling great for 3 reasons:
1) Helped save a beautiful creature
2) Got to see said beautiful creature up close
3) Got to meet someone who spends their life making the world better, helping injured creatures and easing their suffering and does this for no monetary reward.
It’s good to be reminded not everyone is driven by hate and fear.
(Open thread.)
SiubhanDuinne
ONG. I am in tears. What a gorgeous story. ❤️ Kalikal. ❤️ the baby hawk.
Baud
🐣🦅
BigJimSlade
Three cheers!
Hip hip hooray!
Hip hip – well you know the rest ;-)
ArchTeryx
You did a truly good deed. Predators are extremely important, and buteos (buzzards in Europe) are one step below eagles on the food chain. You saved one of the key animals keeping the chipmunks and squirrels under control. Good for you!!
Besides all that predators have been villainized for millenia, when they have all the same feelings any other animals do. That they have to kill to live isn’t evil. It’s NECESSARY. We need so many more like you.
sukabi
Thank you for sharing. 😃
Nukular Biskits
Good evenin’, y’all.
Back from my time travel adventure (you’d have to have seen my comments in AL’s post this morning to get that).
I’d say I worked my ass off but Ms. Biskits sez I never had one to begin with.
Jackie
Kalikal, that made my day! Thank you for taking the time to help – and most likely saving its life – a helpless critter. You will be rewarded in another life 😊🥰
Scout211
Oh, thank you. I needed to read something like this. Thank you Kalakal, for sharing your story and helping to make the world safer for that sweet little eyas. I hope it has a long life after the rescuer and you saved it.
And thanks for posting it, WaterGirl.
Tehanu
Great story. I especially liked when the baby bird tried to hide in the corner.
Nukular Biskits
Kudos, kalakal!!!!!!!!!
H.E.Wolf
Congrats to kalakal (who clearly has librarian research superpowers) and to the rescue person!
In honour of the event, we are all Red-Shouldered Hawks this evening, instead of jackals. Show off your best shrieks! :)
mrmoshpotato
@BigJimSlade: Femur femur hooray!
Scout211
Like this?
Nukular Biskits
@Miss Bianca: (reply from this morning’s thread):
I had no idea this song (Emmylou Harris: Red Dirt Girl ) existed. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Another Scott
A very good story, well told, and beautifully illustrated.
Thanks!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Miss Bianca
@Nukular Biskits: Aww thanks, that helps make my day!
As does Kalakal’s baby eyas rescue story! (Those eyes! That fluff! That sad little wound near its ear! I am deaded.)
stinger
Lovely story. Thank you, kalakal and WaterGirl.
My sister volunteered at the local raptor center for a few years. So interesting!
Nukular Biskits
@Miss Bianca:
I’ve liked Emmylou for a long time, even when she was railing against Digital Audio Tape (DAT) for “taking food out of our mouths” (my paraphrase).
I have a love/hate relationship with my hometown but my ears perk up whenever there’s any mention of it in popular culture. Such as the opening scene in the first X-men movie.
bbleh
Good for you! And perhaps I’m just sheltered and naive, but I think MOST people ARE that way, and even more WANT to be. I think most people who behave badly are driven by fear rather than hate, and even most of the ones driven by hate are that way because of some confused and desperate reaction rather than by nature and would prefer to be otherwise. I think the true sociopaths — the ones that really don’t care, or worse are actively malicious — are a tiny minority and loom far larger in appearance than they are in reality only because their behavior is so heinous and its consequences so damaging.
Faith in humanity. What a thing …
Jackie
@Nukular Biskits:
One of my favorite Emmylou songs. Actually every song she’s ever sang is my favorite – including her trios with Dolly and Linda Ronstadt 😍
Nukular Biskits
@Jackie:
It’s hard for me to pick a favorite but I’d say it’s one of these two:
Emmylou Harris – One Of These Days
Emmylou Harris – Beneath Still Waters
That latter off the “Blue Kentucky Girl” album, which I think was her best.
David Collier-Brown
@stinger: Back when my work had a glass cloister to the parking lot, a red-tailed hawk hit it at speed. My sysadmin was a rescue person and put it in a mostly-closed box to let it wake up, then took it to the hospital when it couldn’t fly away.
mvr
Thanks for the cool story and photos. I think that raptor recovery folks must be pretty thick in the world these days. At least here in the central plains there seem to be quite a few local groups.
HopefullyNotcassandra
Thank you for that lovely story!
There once was a man who survived most nearly everything
His name was Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. He was born with every kind of precious metal in his mouth and shadow of a bad fate hovering in nearly every way. A horse ran him over when he was a boy and left him lame. That changed the course of his life and saved him from the guillotine.
He said when asked about the Terror that all anyone could do was “add a little sweetness” (translated “douceur” in the original). I am never certain I like the old wizard of a diplomat (Talleyrand). Yet, I have decided he is right about our best way forward. I don’t know if I succeed at it.
I will say that you do Watergirl. Thank you for adding sweetness to all of our lives.
Gin & Tonic
One of my pet peeves, sorry: “palate cleanser. “
RevRick
@ArchTeryx: Predators get villainized.
Looks in mirror while eating a hamburger.
Something about this screams hypocrisy.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: I even googled to make sure I had that one right!
Are you objecting to the phrase or the spelling
If I got the spelling wrong, google lied to me.
WaterGirl
@HopefullyNotcassandra: What a nice thing to say!
Jackie
@Nukular Biskits: Emmylou has such a pure voice. I don’t know how else to describe it.
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: Spelling. It’s a term of culinary origin.
Nukular Biskits
@Jackie:
“Pure voice”.
Reminds me of early Dolly Parton or Allison Krauss.
Joy in FL
That bird fell in a good place. I’m so glad Kalakal was there and could help. And I’m glad you shared the story.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: I feel so much better now! I went back up to the top and looked. I did spell it PALATE but fucking AutoCorrect turned it into pallet. I always have to stop and think whether it’s palate or palette. But never pallet.
Darkrose
Thanks so much for that wonderful story. Also yay for librarian superpowers! *flexes
kalakal
Thank you for all the nice comments.
Have to admit when I opened the front door this morning I was half expecting to be confronted by an angry Mother Hawk demanding to know what I’d done with her offspring.
For the life of me I can’t work out where the little mite came from. We have some big Live Oaks in the front yard but no nests and it really wasn’t very mobile. The area is raptor city, lots of Hawks and Owls, and a couple of Bald Eagles not too far away but I can’t work out how it got to the porch.
Nukular Biskits
@kalakal:
If you can, keep us updated on the fledgling’s progress on the path to recuperation.
Citizen Alan
Am I am bad person for thinking that not 1 MAGAt in 10,000 would go to such lengths to save an injured bird?
Kristine
Thank you for a wonderful story. So glad the baby can be released eventually. I hope you can get a photo of release day (or maybe witness it in person?).
I live near a state park, so I see a lot of raptors. Saw a bald eagle the other day—my first sighting at that park, so that was exciting. And a Cooper’s hawk has designated my backyard one of its fave take-out places.
Kristine
@kalakal:
It’s so light that if some other bird had plucked it from its nest, then lost its grip, a stiff breeze could’ve carried it?
Does anything else raid raptor nests besides other raptors?
Harrison Wesley
@Citizen Alan: In the parking lot of the building next to mine there’s a car with two bumper stickers: “Trump Saves Us 2024” and “Save A Life. Adopt An Abandoned Pet.” Odd combo.
kalakal
That’s about all I can think of
I’ll try and keep up with the chicks progress.
BigJimSlade
@mrmoshpotato: Hah!
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Nukular Biskits: I second that emotion. Thank you Kalakal
mvr
@kalakal: I think raptors sometimes go after each other’s young. (There are some horrifying youtube vids.) With the blood on this one I wonder whether a non-parent was absconding with it and dropped it since you mention how many you have in your neighborhood.
I see I’m not the first to have this thought but I’ll leave it up anyway. After all I’m probably not the first to have thought of anything I’ve ever written.
Nukular Biskits
The comments of @mvr and @Kristine remind me of when I found my “Christmas baby” Chymera on a very cold December morning in my (then) in-laws back yard.
We were visiting for the holidays and I walked out in the backyard on a very brisk (in the 30s) morning only to hear something squalling. Those who have raised kittens would instantly know the sound. Walking around in the backyard, I tried to hone in on the sound, almost stepping on her. She was abandoned … or had been taken by a predator and dropped … in the fallen leaves in the middle of the yard.
I immediately picked her up, put her inside my jacket for warmth. She was probably all of less than a week old.
We raised her on a bottle and, when I last saw her, she still hated the cold.
WaterGirl
@Nukular Biskits: I’m sorry, this must be one of the beloved pets you lost in the divorce.
I am tearing up just thinking about that.
CarolPW
@Kristine:
Ravens. They are hell on any nestlings.
Nukular Biskits
@WaterGirl:
Yeah. She’d crawl up under the covers with me every night, especially in the winter.
Mean little shit. LOL.
Michael Bersin
Drove thirty minutes south to Clinton, Missouri this morning for an 11:30 a.m. gathering near the town square. For the past several months a group of concerned “non-partisan” citizens have been meeting weekly. They decided to organize a teach-in (they didn’t call it that) and a march around the downtown area at noon today. Clinton, Missouri is a town of around 9400 people and is the seat of Henry County. It is touted by the locals as the gateway to the Lake of the Ozarks.
We showed up at the appointed time. These folks aren’t the usual suspects for this type of activism. I’ve known the Democratic Party people around these parts, off and on, for over thirty years. This ain’t them.
The organizers used social media to promote their event. They told me that they had been planning for a long time and that none of them had ever organized a public protest before.
Long story, shorter: around forty people showed up (with signs), they had their teach-in (Fascism is bad, Fascism is happening here now), there were donuts, there were march marshals, the local gendarmes were notified that this was happening, and there was a march.
Here’s the thing. This was a big undertaking for them, they were thorough, they did it right (no major incidents). This was their first, they’re doing it again on (gasp) May Day. In Clinton, Missouri.
If this kind of thing is happening across America, then there may, indeed, be something going on.
A guy with two cameras (including a long lens on a monopod) with media credentials tends to tamp down the instinct of right wingnuts to get all confrontational. In three separate instances pointing the camera at them from a distance set off their radar, they’s turn away, and shrivel up as if they were slugs and a long ton of highway department road salt got dumped on them.
One memorable challenger almost prompted me to ask her how the Meth cooking was going this season. Another bejeweled and betattooed person who had turned out from a health food parlor on the square, ostensibly to heckle “I like Elon Musk”, turned back inside when she saw the camera and flipped me off from the shadows. I got the shot because Lightroom is my friend. She was wearing a I John 4:10 tee-shirt and had a pseudo runic dove tattoo on her right forearm. Cue Gandhi.
I had a good time and I got a large number of images which I will post later at my place.
It was a good day.
Clinton, Missouri [pop. 9416] – April 26, 2025
kalakal
@CarolPW: Or maybe Crows, there are a Lot of Crows around here, they don’t nest here but it’s on their regular flight path
WaterGirl
@Michael Bersin: i’m glad you told us about all of that.
Jackie
@Michael Bersin: That’s AWESOME!
dnfree
@Michael Bersin: That’s awesome! The sign is great. And those people are brave and determined.
RevRick
@Michael Bersin: 1 John 4:10: “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
Oof. There’s a lot to unpack here.
It’s typical white Evangelical theology to make everything about the Cross as some sort of get-out-of-jail-free card. And by ripping this verse out of its context, it dishonestly twists its meaning.
I could respond by wearing a shirt emblazoned with 1 John 4:8, which reads, “ Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Which clearly implies that an “I love Jesus” theology that isn’t matched by how we live in this world is just cheap, hollow words.
prostratedragon
“Hawk’s Variations,” Coleman Hawkins
Nukular Biskits
@RevRick:
I’ve long taken umbrage at the “I’m not perfect, just forgiven” excuse of so many “Christians” to act in complete contradiction to the Gospels.
Layer8Problem
That was a beautiful story. Thank you for helping that helpless little thing.
Trivia Man
From the other end of the food chain, i have a nest of bunnies under the porch. I happened upon the mother in the process of giving birth. I couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t running away so i went closer… several hairless lumps with big eyes. I stepped away and went in the house.
Im torn. I have plans for my most ambitious vegetable garden ever, and i have no illusions my fences will be enough.
It looked like she moved them but i read up. Standard practice is to leave the area – mom is much more visible to predators so she clears out. Sneaking back twice a day to feed, just 5 minutes at a time. Super super dense nutrition.
Que sera, sera.
mvr
@Trivia Man: Clover Mulch. I’ve used both mini clover and regular white dutch clover. They both work. I’ve decided to keep my mini-clover in the lawn and use the taller stuff in the garden this year. But the basic idea is just to plant a clover plot and put your veggies in between them at normal planting distances. The rabbits prefer the clover and mostly leave the veggies alone.
Clover also fixes nitrogen in the soil so there is more than one benefit. And it keeps the sun off the soil so it doesn’t dry out as fast.
We’ve been doing this for a couple of decades by now and it works well. It does not however deter the squirrels who think of tomatos as giant acorns, though this behavior normally is drought caused so leaving them some water helps a bit with that.
sab
@Trivia Man: Bunnies eat lettuce. Monsters hate bunnies. Dilemma.
WTFGhost
There’s great joy in love, especially love that is unbound by species.
Miss Bianca
@RevRick:
One of my favorite modern gospel numbers includes this line: “If you don’t love your neighbor, then you can’t love God.”