Frequently I have moments where my life doesn’t make any sense what-so-ever. It’s the entire basis for this blog. This was the case when a couple months ago I found myself crashing a Dungeons and Dragons meeting while being simultaneously stared down by a live hawk in a little city apartment. How… did… this… happen?

I don’t even know. This is just the weird situation I found myself in when I volunteered to drive. The hawk was sitting on a parrot’s perch, little tinkling bells tied to its feet, its leg tethered to it’s post. When I walked in she was hunched over something bloody as she ripped her dinner into chunks and greedily swallowed it making damn certain she didn’t have to share a morsel. She eyed everyone as a potential competitor. With her hunger satiated she spent the rest of the night intensely taking in her surroundings and nodding off when she got bored. It was all very weird.

I learned she was currently in the care of an apprentice falconer after having been found in the wild thin and weakened. From here she’d found herself in this semi-captivity, fed until fattened, bonded with a human, and brought out on hunts. Someday when she could sufficiently show she’d learned how to hack it on her own she would be released back into the wild but for now… she was just sitting and staring me down. It was a weird primal feeling.

And I’ll admit I don’t have the best history with hawks. I had spent many afternoons screaming profanities and clamoring on pots and pans trying to scare off the hawks that were killing off my free range chickens on an almost daily basis. Although I gave quite a show to my neighbors the hawks couldn’t have given a fuck. They’d still catch them, kill them, and take a quick bite or two before I’d reach them punching and kicking the air. I wasn’t allowed to actually touch any of them… harming a bird of prey in any way, even if they’re more populous than a swarm of rats, is thoroughly illegal in the US. It’s a law that was put forth in the days these birds were struggling to survive extinction but stayed in effect even now… even when they were a tremendous pain in my backside.

I stared back at the hawk. She’d singled me out for some reason and seemed to be playing a game of Don’t Blink. I don’t back down that easy and just glared back at her. I’d like to think we had a silent understanding of each other from this exchange. She seemed to remember me the next week. But that was the last I saw her as I disappeared into my own life… that is until recently…

I was once again back in the area and woke up that morning to the phone ringing.

“What is it?”

“They’re hunting with the bird down at the park. We’ve been invited to go join them.”

“Okaaay.” Not like I was going to say no to a falconing expedition. This is the sort of randomness I thrive on.

And so we walked to the park where the bird had perched herself rather low in a tree, just out of reach of her handler. It was raining that day and everything was wet including the bird who was flashing some intense stink-eye at all of us.

“She’s grumpy today.”

I had brought my fancy camera along hoping to get a few good shots. Of course the second I decided to take a photo the battery died. And so I was just part of this strange assortment of individuals using a stick to thrash at the bushes. The point was to make a sort of line formation to drive prey out of the thicket and into the open where the bird could swoop.

Today there were enough meaty squirrels dashing about (and screaming squirrel profanities at us) to feed a whole kettle of hawks but Miss Priss over there was having none of it. Squirrels? Please. She was a diva, knowing exactly what she wanted – a rabbit.

And so she was led around the park. She didn’t follow very well, sometimes at all. We had to keep track of her by the jingling of her feet bells and the beeping of a GPS locator. Again and again her handler tried to settle her high in the trees but she stayed low, sulking and giving us a murderous glare as she got wetter and wetter in the rain.

She did give three attempts at swooping at something but came up with only a tuft of gray hair in her terrifying talons. Eventually we all got sight of at least two rabbits and drove them closer to her but she was done. She seemed to have spent the whole morning lording over her humans upon her perch in the tree thinking, “Look at what I can get these idiots to do!” I don’t think she was a dumb bird. On the contrary I think she knew exactly what she was doing – waiting to be served lunch so she didn’t have to catch it herself. It worked. We were all soaking wet and tired. And so back to her carrier she went but not before getting the attention of some kids coming off the bus from school. She flapped her wings a few times as they yelled, “burd!”

And that was the end of this particular adventure…