Poking dead things with a stick

[ppfuf]

There was a dead hawk in the backyard, caught between the fence and the wisteria, when I got home from Thanksgiving weekend. I found it last night and did what any grown-up would do; called my mom. Call animal control, she said. Sadly, budget cuts in my county mean that animal control doesn’t deal with dead things in your backyard. If I wanted to put the body in a bag and leave it on the street, they’d be happy to pick it up. I asked a few questions and they weren’t going to get all CSI on it, so I decided against leaving it out for the school children who walk past my house to find this morning. Some teacher at the local middle school probably had a much duller Show And Tell today. Pity. It was a large and beautiful hawk and would have been quite educational.

I put on work gloves and lined the trash can with the biggest bag I had. GM was dispatched to the shed to get shovels and rakes and implements of destruction. I bravely got close enough to place the trash bin directly under the hawk. In the moment my back was turned to pick up the rake, GM poked the dead thing with the shovel and dropped it directly into the bag.

Being both a boY and a knight, I should have known he’d fix any problem that could be solved with a stick.

Comments

[finickynarcane.livejournal.com]

What?!? No feathers were salvaged for costuming purposes?

[ppfuf.livejournal.com]

Oooo, I should have done that. It's still in the clean bag, perhaps I will be brave enough to try to get some feathers when I get home tonight.

[kahnegabs.livejournal.com]

You might want to wonder why the bird died before you handle its feathers.

If it looks like an airplane strike or something, not a problem, but if it was some sort of illness, handling it might not be wise.

[ppfuf.livejournal.com]

Good point. I'm pretty sure it died of stress after being tabgled in the wisteria. It looked like a wing got caught in a branch. The poor bird was probabaly after one of the squirrels that hang out on the fence sometimes.

[kahnegabs.livejournal.com]

Oh that is sad!
They are such beautiful birds.

I have pair that roost in the oak behind my house and just root them on when the go after the ground-squirrels in the field out there.

They have the most amazing call. I read that when movies want a sound for an enraged eagle, they use the call of the red tail hawks. It sounds downright spooky.

[finickynarcane.livejournal.com]

No matter the cause of death, if you do choose to harvest feathers, they should be washed before they get stored.