Stopping By The Woods

Back on September 13 of this past year, my friends Linda and Dean were with me on a 40 mile bike ride around the Indiana countryside.  It was a great day to ride; sunny, crystalline blue skies with interspersed, puffy, cumulus clouds, the kind of late-summer day that I absolutely love to go riding in.  I am not much of a “group” rider, but I do enjoy having a few close friends around, people who know me, and will not necessarily take offense when I do not say a word for miles, or when I seem to be in a daze.  When I really get into a ride, I tend to get lost in my own thoughts and feelings, and the surroundings.  Sometimes riding to me is just a shade shy of mystical that way.
This particular ride was one of those rides.  I don’t remember much of it, other than the event I will be shortly describing.  I know that we rode out past Memphis IN, out almost to Henryville IN, then made our way back.  I wore my Garmin watch that day, and I have the route recorded, which you can see by clicking this link.
When I first saw the hawk, Linda and Dean were a short distance in front of me.  I was looking off to my left on a road called Bud Prather Road.  I am very much a lollygagging, take-in-the-scenery kind of rider.  One of my favorite things to do, on rural rides especially, is look off to the side of the road at the tall grass rushing by in a delicious golden blur.   Sometimes I enjoy looking at my shadow on the rolling grass, cast by the sun, if it’s low enough in the sky and I am in the right position.  At this particular time, there was no shadow, but I was still grooving on the colors, the smell of sweet farmland, and the sounds of the wind with the soft purring of my freewheel, gears and chain.
Suddenly up ahead, I noticed what I first thought was a brown dog standing by the side of the road.  I always have a sixth sense “radar” operating for dogs or any other creatures that may give chase or dart out in front of me, but as Linda and Dean had both ridden past it and it had not given chase, any such worry was practically non-existent.  I was more curious than anything else.
We were all going slightly fast, about 26 mph, on this one little stretch with a very slight decline in elevation.  As I sped past, I realized it wasn’t a dog at all, but a large bird.  Its eyes met mine as I rode by it.  I immediately got the feeling it was in some kind of danger or distress, and my heart just leapt inside my chest.  I hollered out “A bird, a bird!” and Linda and Dean slowed.   “Stopping, stopping,” I called out, and they both stopped with me.  I told them there was a bird back there, a big one, just standing by the side of the road.  I may have sounded like I just saw a UFO, but they know me I guess, and understand my idiosyncrasies.  At least I am sure Linda does, as she has known me longer.  She knows if I see a large bird just standing there, it’s something worth getting excited about.
We all rode back, slowly, and we all saw it.  At this point, I will call it “him,” because I believe it to be a juvenile male red-tailed hawk.  We did not ride up directly to him, but instead dismounted and walked very, very slowly, to not disturb him or appear as a threat.  He let us get really close, about eight to ten feet, before he flapped his wings and sort of fluttered back a bit towards a fence behind him.
We stood there and speculated.  What could we do?  What was wrong with the bird?  Was he injured?  Old?  Ill in some way?  On one side of the road, the one opposite the bird, is a large electrical substation.  It is the only really industrial looking site in an otherwise scenic and rural locale, and often when I ride by it I can “feel” the electricity in the air, as well as hear a noticeable hum and crackle.  I speculated that perhaps the big bird had received a shock of some sort, but how were we to know.  The main thing was, what could we do for him?
We decided to use my cell phone to call Raptor Rehab, a volunteer organization devoted to providing aid and rehabilitation to injured birds.  We dialed 411, got the number, and left a message.  There was nothing more at the time to do.  My heart sank as we rode off, leaving the bird behind.  There was something about him.  You could look right into his eyes.  I know it sounds strange, but it was as if he was telling us to help him somehow.  I am predisposed to feeling a strong connection and kinship to animals, I suppose.  I can never sit through a viewing of Winged Migration without getting emotional.  I am a big sap in that way.
Anyway, we made our way back, as there were still ten miles to go at that point.  And every one of those miles, I thought about that bird.  Was he going to hop into the road and get hit by a car?  Was he going to be the victim of some stupid redneck with a gun?  All sorts of outcomes regarding the bird popped into my head, most of them not good.  (Yeah, one of my “curses” is that when confronted with a problem, I tend to go through a negative risk analysis and worse-case scenarios.)
When I got home, I immediately called Raptor Rehab again.  No answer but I left another message.  Then I grabbed a bite to eat, still thinking about the bird.  After an hour or so, the phone rang.  It was the rehab place.  The woman on the other end explained that if I were to capture the bird and bring it to them, they would take it, that afternoon.  Capture the bird?  That’s something I didn’t feel too sure about.  I had naively thought that they would come out to retrieve the bird, but it made sense that they could not possibly do that.  How could they know the bird would still be there?  The woman explained to me that if I got a box and a towel, and some gloves, a capture would be quite easy.  All I would have to do is throw the towel over the bird and it would quietly allow me to put him in the box.
Well, I promised that I would go back and try.  I called Linda and Dean because I know they wanted to help that bird, too.  I grabbed a box and some gloves and a small blanket, and off I went, meeting them there.  At first, we saw no sign of the bird, but then we spotted him atop a fence post about a quarter mile down the road.   We approached from different sides, towels and blanket at the ready.   The bird hopped off the post and tried to scramble away as we got closer.  Fortunately, there were two large telephone poles on their sides near the substation, obviously there was some construction about to take place at that spot, and the bird tried to get away from us by attempting to go under one of the phone poles.  This made it easy for me to throw a blanket over him, and I then swallowed hard, took a deep breath and grabbed for him with Dean right next to me blocking the bird’s escape path if he tried it.  And the woman had been right.  There was no struggle at all.
We placed him in a box and drove him to the rehab facility the woman had told me about on the phone.  My heart was pounding the entire time.  Once there, we were met by a man who took the bird out and examined him.  He identified him as a red-tailed hawk, perhaps a juvenile.  We filled out some paperwork and he promised to have the bird looked at by a vet the following Monday.  Then he gave us a tour of the place.  It was awesome.
A few days later I emailed the facility to inquire about the bird.  In a reply, the woman told me that that bird was doing great, had gained weight, was eating everything that they put in front of him.  If all went well, they would release him back into the wild in the spring.  I was overjoyed!  I have not written about this until now, because I am in the process of contacting them again to inquire on the bird.  I sent along a small donation to their cause.  If you are so inclined, please feel free to do the same.  It is one worthy organization!
Looking back, it just tickles me that we were able to do something for the little guy.  Even if he had not have pulled through, or if something else still could happen to him, at least we did what we could for him.  The very next day, the remnants of Hurricane Ike tore through here like you would not believe, with 70mph+ winds.  I was glad that the bird did not have to struggle to make it through that.