Darkly Colored Felines of Fury

Author

Brenda May

Date

Mom's Day at the Owl Rescue Centre2003-07-19

This past Saturday, Rick joined several members of my company for at volunteer day at Orphaned Wildlife Preservation Centre to do cleaning of cages, mowing lawns inside cages, and general maintenance at the Centre. I organized the event and we had a wonderful day, culminating with helicopter rides from a patron of the centre. We were able to make a very obvious change in the cages of several eagles, hawks and owls.

The highlight of the day for me was that I was asked to help in the rescue of a red tailed hawk which was injured on an Indian reservation in Tsawwassen. Rob, the wildlife rescue officer, came zipping down the road in the rescue truck and said he wanted whoever organized the event to join him on a real rescue – that was me! We trekked about 40 feet down a steep embankment and into a dense forest. I was the net person, he was the flusher. It was hard work but very rewarding as after about 45 minutes, we were able to net the very large hawk. My legs and arms were bleeding from blackberry nettles and my lip was cut from a branch whacking me in the head, but the end result was that the injured bird was caught and caged to take back for treatment. Did you know that a bird will act immediately docile if his legs are pinned and he is flipped on his back? Sound familiar – just like a cat! Anyways, I have included 2 pictures of the hawk.

Rick had a wonderful time with the “power trimmer from hell” which roared like a lion and blew up billows of exhaust. Hmmmmm.. men and their toys.
Anyways, this was a very satisfying day.