Flyaway, page 28
Just before Christmas the friend who was taking care of the redtail called, saying her leg looked fine and that she was grasping and landing perfectly. He was about to leave on a trip but his daughter was caring for his birds, and I could pick her up any time. A week after our fun and festive Christmas I was back in my friend’s flight cage, staring up at the redtail perched high above my head.
“Oh, my God,” I said to his daughter, who stood beside me. “What happened to her leg?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, visibly upset. “Dad said they were all healthy; all I had to do was feed them, and I…I didn’t notice anything was wrong until now.”
I caught the redtail and looked at her leg in disbelief. The skin around the wounded area had sloughed off, leaving what little flesh remained around the bone hard and black. Her foot was swollen and clenched into a club.
I drove straight to Croton Animal Hospital. “It’s not good,” said Carol Popolow, eyeing the redtail’s leg. “It looks like her blood vessels were damaged.”
“Did I put her in the flight cage too soon?” I asked. “Should I have kept up the massage for longer?”
“I don’t know that it would have helped,” she said.
I stared at her mutely, silently pleading with her to give me a shred of hope instead of the clear, professional assessment that I always asked for, that she always delivered. She must have sensed my desperation, as she somehow combined the two.
“If you want to, you can treat it for a week and see if it responds,” she said finally. “Even if it does respond, it doesn’t mean there won’t be other issues. But you can make another decision in a week.”
“Uh-oh,” said John, after I’d settled the redtail for the night. “You look like you could use a nice big glass of wine.”
I had one, then another, and eventually lost count. “Excuse me, whoever you are,” I said, gazing blearily at John at the end of the night. “But what was the reason for this fine evening? Was there some sort of bird calumny? Caluminimy?”
“I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘calamity,’” he replied. “And not to worry, all the little birdies are snug in their nests. The only calamity around here is what’s happened to your vocabulary.”
The following day, head pounding, I began the redtail’s treatment. Each day John would hold her while I carefully washed her leg, dressed it with a special ointment, then padded and wrapped it. Even though we usually referred to her as “the redtail,” we christened her CJ, for Calamity Jane.
By the end of the week her leg was responding, the blackened scab eventually falling off to reveal pink tissue underneath. Despite her ordeal her appetite remained constant, allowing me to hide her pain medication in her food and convincing me that she had the will to continue. But then her toes began to curl, signifying that her tendons were contracting, so I splinted two of them to keep them straight. Her moods shifted. Sometimes I would approach her and she’d stare steadily back into my eyes, positive and strong; other times her depression would hit me like a blow. The ability to feel the mood of an animal is a sense that is strong in some people and weak in others, and can be honed by time and experience and desire. “I promise you,” I whispered to her, even though I never make promises I don’t know that I can keep. “I promise I’ll let you go.”
She needed more exercise than the large hospital crate could afford her, but she was not yet ready for the flight cage. I began placing her on my heavily padded examination table, upon which rested a thick round section of log. She’d hop onto the log and I’d roll it slowly back and forth, giving her the opportunity to use her toe and foot muscles to grip and balance. One day she hopped off the log and stood on the table.
“Come back up here,” I said, and tapped the log with my hand. After a moment, she jumped back onto the log. Slowly I reached down to the floor and picked up a wooden perch, which I placed at the other end of the table. When I tapped it, she gathered herself and jumped from the log to the perch. When I tapped the table, she jumped down. Graced by her acceptance of me I’d watch silently as she rocked back and forth on her perch, her great curved talons inches away from my unprotected hand.
Red-tailed Hawk
Then one day she jumped onto the log and quickly turned around, ripping off her entire back talon and staining the white towels red with blood. I washed and padded and wrapped and then wrote a frantic e-mail to Louise Shimmel, who runs the Cascades Raptor Center in Oregon, and who quickly sent back several paragraphs of information about talon regrowth. “You’d be amazed at how often that happens,” Louise concluded. “Carry on and don’t beat yourself up over it.”
But of course I did, berating myself for not having a mid-size enclosure that would allow a recovering bird to move about more freely than the hospital crate. My dark dreams returned. Later I called Eileen Wicker, who runs the Kentucky Raptor Center and is another of the Grand Masters of the Raptorcare list, desperate for any piece of advice that might make a difference. “Take down this number,” she said. “They make a healing cream that’s the best thing I’ve ever used. But talons take a long time to grow back,” she finished. “You know she’ll be with you for at least a year.”
I alternated between letting her exercise on the table and putting a second padded perch in her crate. When she was on the table she would occasionally bang her bandaged talon sheath and make it bleed, but if she stayed in her crate her tendons would begin to contract and her toes to curl. I massaged her leg and toes, trying to believe that I could heal her damaged limb through sheer force of will. Increasingly restless, she eyed the windows and made me fear that she would suddenly launch herself through one of them, to try to escape a life over which she had no control. At the beginning of the third week I called the Raptor Trust and talked to Kristi Ward, whom I had met once and spoken to many times over the phone. I relayed everything Dr. Popolow had said, describing the situation calmly until the end, when my voice began to betray me.
“Kristi,” I said. “I would do anything for her. But I’m so tired. I’m afraid I’m not making the right decisions. I want what’s best for her. I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.”
“Of course, we’ll take her,” said Kristi. “Bring her down.”
That afternoon CJ slipped off the table, dropped to the floor, and broke off another talon.
I took her to the Raptor Trust the following morning and drove home with an empty carrier, searching for something more I could have done for her, wondering if I should have done as much as I did. I wrote Ed a long stream of consciousness, ending with an anguished mea culpa. “Dear Suzie,” came the immediate reply, “Shakespeare said in Measure for Measure: ‘Our doubts are traitors, / And make us lose the good we oft might win, / By fearing to attempt.’” When I finally slept I dreamed of a forest where redtails hung from the trees, struggling to set themselves free.
Several days later I called the Raptor Trust. “We put her in the clinic,” said Kristi, “but she was really nervous and upset. She started bashing and knocked off another talon, so we put her outside in a small flight.”
I’m going to lose her, I thought.
“While she was in the flight she knocked off her last talon,” she said. “Our vet examined her and said her circulation had been too badly compromised. She’s not going to be releasable. I’m really sorry.”
“Is she in pain?” I managed.
“She’s not putting any weight on that leg,” said Kristi.
“What do you think is the best thing for her?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Our vet advised us to euthanize her,” she said quietly, “but we’ll do anything you want us to do.”
I promised I’d let her go.
After I hung up the phone I put on my running shoes, called Merlin, and ran to the top of a ridge high above the Hudson River, high above a world for the most part oblivious to the death of a thousand redtails, let alone one. I sat on the frozen ground and hugged my knees, my body knotted and aching.
Bring them back, then let them go.
I brought her back. Twice. And for what?
I returned red-eyed to the house, where John and the kids provided sympathy and consolation and sent me to bed early. Exhausted and defeated, I slept a black and dreamless sleep for ten hours and woke up in tears. Pulling myself together, I awakened the kids and readied them for school and walked them down to the bus, then fell apart when I returned to the house.
For the next few days I held myself together around my family, none of whom were fooled. I assured them I was all right while trying to stave off a growing sense of panic. I had no wild birds to care for, but kept thinking there was one I had forgotten. I stared straight ahead as I ran through the woods, expecting to see CJ flying beside me out of the corner of my eye, but she wasn’t there. I spotted a redtail soaring above the field, but it wasn’t her. I went to sleep hoping for a dream, even if it was a bad one, but my dreams had vanished.
All four of us sat in front of the fireplace one night, watching a movie in which one of the characters moves to Montana. The sky was blue and endless and empty. I searched the screen for a red-tailed hawk, my heart pounding.
She wasn’t there, either.
I rose abruptly and hurried through my bedroom and into the bathroom. I huddled on the floor in the corner, crushed beneath the weight of a world filled with wronged and wounded creatures, a world I stupidly thought I could make right just because I cared so much.
I heard John’s footsteps, and the door opened slowly. “What is the matter with you?” he said.
“She’s gone,” I sobbed.
“Who?” he asked. “Who are you talking about?”
“The redtail,” I said. “I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find her.”
John’s expression darkened. “But…she’s dead.”
“Why can’t you understand?” I cried.
Chapter 40
SHADES OF GRAY
“You’re a fanatic,” said Elisha Fisch, Ph.D.
“Am not,” I said.
Dr. Fisch leaned back in his comfortable chair, glancing briefly at the notebook resting on his lap.
“Think about it,” he said. “You believe in something so totally that you have allowed it to take over your life. It causes you distress, yet you don’t stop or even cut down. You have isolated yourself to the extent where you rarely see your friends. You believe your way is the right way, and that anyone who disagrees with your philosophy is wrong.”
“Hmmm,” I said.
“Tanya. Can you see her point of view?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I disagree with her and she’s wrong,” I said, only half facetiously.
“Take a minute and try to understand why she would have kept your hawk alive.”
I blinked rapidly. “Probably for the same reason I did. Because she couldn’t stand the thought of losing her.”
“But eventually you had the hawk put to sleep.”
“And here I am.”
“Well. It wasn’t exactly an isolated case of cause and effect. But I suspect that Tanya might say that if, at the end of the day she feels good and you’re in pieces, you are misguided. And self-destructive.”
“And I would say if you’re not doing what’s best for the bird, you shouldn’t be in this business.”
“Have you told your friends on the mailing list about what happened with the hawk?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“You said everyone on the list consoles one another when something goes wrong.”
“They do.”
“Have you told anyone about your hawk?"
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m becoming birdlike. I don’t want to show any weakness.”
“I thought birds don’t want to show weakness because they might be spotted by a predator, who would then try to eat them.”
“It’s not an exact analogy.”
“It might be closer than you think. Do you consider yourself weak?”
“Do I seem like a tower of strength to you?”
“Actually, yes.”
“Then why can’t I tell people no? Why can’t I turn birds away? Why can’t I take care of them and just soldier on when they die? How do I stop caring about them?”
Dr. Fisch regarded me with such compassion that I had to look away.
“There are several things you can do to cut down on the number of birds you take in,” he said. “Right now you might consider shutting down for a few months. How do you stop caring? If you ever figure that out, let me know.”
Later I drove home and changed the message on my answering machine. “If this a wild bird call I’m sorry, but we are temporarily closed,” said my recorded voice. “Please call the Wildlife Hotline.” I called the animal hospitals. “Just take it easy for a while,” said Carol Popolow. “We all know how hard you’ve been working.” I left both my electronic mailing lists, and my rainbow-colored library of three-ring binders lay idle.
The February woods were gray and silent. I haunted the ridgelines, running the border between earth and sky, trying to achieve a clear mindfulness. I sat and watched the river, stroking Merlin’s big, powerful shoulders, knowing his strength was an illusion, knowing that no matter how healthy my family seemed they were only a stroke of luck away from disaster. I was no longer exhilarated by the beauty of a soaring hawk; as tears stung my eyes, I felt defeated by its fragility and retreated back into the woods, where the winter canopy obscured the sky.
I watched Mac cradle his guitar as he played “Hey Joe,” saw Skye place her camera carefully on the shelf when she finished using it. At least a guitar or a camera won’t sicken and die on them, I thought, grateful they could spend their love on something that was, for now, unable to hurt them.
Skye took a series of photos of the snow-covered field shrouded in mist, dreamlike images in shades of gray and brown. As I stared at them I tried to envision myself being drawn into the photograph, hoped the outline would seep into my subconscious enough to return that night as a dream. But nothing appeared while I slept. I listened to Mac play the opening notes to “Stairway to Heaven,” remembering when teenaged boys would try to decipher the meaning of life from its lyrics. When I was seventeen I didn’t need Led Zeppelin to explain the meaning of life to me, but now I wasn’t so sure.
Ed sent me e-mails. “Call me if you need to talk,” he wrote. “You will get past this point in your life, it will just take a little while.”
I willed my rickety psyche to a feeling of calm normalcy. I stopped answering the telephone, and turned the sound off on the machine so I couldn’t hear who was leaving a message. John sorted through them all at the end of the day, relaying the ones from friends and family and deleting the rest. Inevitably, though, someone left the sound on by mistake. I was reading in the living room and heard a woman’s voice coming from the kitchen.
“Please help me,” it said. “I have this beautiful bird here, and he’s really badly hurt. I don’t know what to do. Please call me back.”
I hurried out the back door and fled to the rocky outcropping behind the house. I looked down at the shed and the flight cage, on the small world I had so carefully created.
It wasn’t supposed to end like this, I thought.
The following morning I changed the message on my answering machine. “If this is a wild bird call I’m sorry, but Flyaway is permanently closed,” said my recorded voice. “We will not be opening again.”
I zealously vacuumed the house, cleaned out all the closets, rearranged the kitchen and garage, caught up on five years’ worth of yard work, and trailed the kids until they begged me to stop. I filled the bird feeders, then tried to avoid looking out the window lest I start to wonder about the songbirds I didn’t see. I ran through the woods with Merlin, trying not to think about anything.
“I wish I could see what’s going on in that head of yours,” said John.
“No, you don’t,” I said, managing a small smile. “It’s like Iwo Jima in here.”
As spring eased its way toward us I watched as Nacho strutted across the yard to investigate an abandoned bone of Merlin’s, wondering how many of the migrant birds would return this year and how many would fall by the wayside.
“Mom,” said Mac, startling me. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
“What?” I said.
“You’re such a good rehabber,” he said. “You do such a good job. When things go wrong, it’s not your fault.”
I met his eyes.
“Thank you,” I said.
My friend India Howell left her orphanage in Tanzania for the first of her biannual fund-raising trips to the United States. As always she rolled up the driveway in her rented car, here for a twenty-four-hour visit, and from deep within her enormous suitcase came handmade gifts: placemats, baskets, a kikoi for her goddaughter Skye. She opened her laptop, the African Children’s Chorus burst into song, and photos flashed on the screen: laughing kids of all ages, their arms around each other, around volunteers, gathered in front of the new library, the new clinic. Kids who suddenly, magically, had a future.
“I get away,” she said, as the two of us drank white wine at a small restaurant overlooking the Hudson River. “Twice a year I come back here for four weeks at a time. I have a whole network of people helping me—not that they don’t come with their own complications.”
“But you love those kids. How do you say no?”
“I don’t have a choice. Every single day I have people lined up at my office door holding kids. They tell me they can’t feed them, they have no money, and if I don’t take them the kids will die. But my resources are limited. And if I take in more than I can care for, the whole organization will come crashing down.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You know that saying—‘You can’t save them all’?”
As she regarded me, her expression changed. “You never really believed it, did you?” she asked.
