I've Got the Hawk and the Hawk's Got Me

As I ran, I repeated: Boltcutters. Cat carrier. Towels. Gloves. Boltcutters. Cat carrier. Towels. Gloves. Boltcutters. Cat carrier. Towels. Gloves.

I didn't want to forget anything. But first to find boltcutters. Did we have them? I'd need them. 

I scuttled around the garage, looking in the dim recesses for anything that might cut double-strand barbed wire. Pruners weren't gonna do it. And there on the wall, hanging from a nail, a brand-new pair of wire cutters. Incredible. Tag still on them, still zip tied so you couldn't use them. OK. Damn. I had boltcutters. Sure beats a hacksaw (my next option).

Grabbed the cat carrier. It looked small. In too much of a hurry to figure something else out.

Grabbed a couple of towels and my rose-pruning gloves from Foxgloves. I knew they wouldn't be thick enough, but I needed maneuverability. I couldn't handle her in gauntlets, even if I had 'em.

Threw it all in the car and sped out the driveway. Curtis was just returning from his little hunt, tracking me home, and I stopped and opened the door so he could jump in.  We drove right into the hayfield because: Subaru. 

I  unloaded all my stuff and assessed the situation. 

First, I threw a couple towels over her so I could contain her. She tore them off in a lightning flash of talons.

OK, that didn't work. I went to grab her ankles and she struck even faster. Bam! like a snake. That didn't work, either. I covered her head with towels. She threw the towels off. By now she was ready for anything. Man. This hawk. 

I decided I would have to just cut her down off the wire and try to contain her afterward. Two cuts and she was on the ground, on the other side of the fence from me. 

She was so shocked to no longer be hanging that I managed to throw towels on her again and sort of semi-bundle her up and feed her through the wire to my side. I wasn't about to try to get that section of wire out of her patagium; she could just wear it until she got into surgery. 

I knew I had to contain her for both our safety. I lifted her and took one photo before all the fun started. She was simply monstrous! In retrospect, I should have headed for home right then.

I started to put her head-first into the cat carrier until I realized that it was a horribly small space and that wouldn't be right. I didn't think I could even close the door! This was one HUGE redtail. 

So, against my better judgement, I backed her out of the carrier. Thinking on it, I probably should have left her in it, headfirst, for transport, open door or no. Yeah, that would have been the smart thing to do, but I wanted to do the kind thing.

Painstakingly, I backed her out. And when her head came free and she could see what was going on, she nailed me. Her foot clenched on my right index and middle finger, and bore down with a viselike grip that took my breath away. 

The glove helped, but it didn't help as much as I'd have liked.

I was now in a most curious position. I was squatting in a hayfield, out of sight of the road, and even my car was out of sight, thanks to a rise in the field. 

I was in a lot of pain. My hand was pinned by a very angry hawk. Trying to loosen her talons with my left hand only made her bear down harder. I knew that would be the case, but you try anyway. I thought, "Right index finger. Who needs that?" I allowed myself a humorless chuckle, but the gravity of my situation was not lost on me.

I knew that she could maintain this grip for hours. Well @#$#@$#. What do I do now? I can't walk with a hawk dangling from my hand. I can't do anything with a hawk locked onto my hand.  I couldn't drive or walk or crawl or do anything but pray she'd let me go.  Curtis was waiting in the car, and I was not about to get in the car with my precious dog and a flapping, unsecured hawk! What a mess that would be. I couldn't have driven it anyway!

The only thing that I could think to do was to face completely away from her and get my body and face as far away from her as possible. I curled up in the grass, my captive arm extended, and tried to forget that I was utterly helpless. I hoped the hawk would forget that I was there and relax her grip.

It was unholy strong.

And ever so slowly, she did let up. Moving like a slug, I grasped the fingertip of the trapped glove with my left hand, and started to wiggle and back my smashed fingers out of it. Thank God I'd been wearing gloves. 

My thoroughly dented but unhurt index finger. Note that she still has a death grip on the glove!

Finally, I was free, sort of. I wadded toweling around both of her wicked feet and picked her up by her feet. This should have been a one-handed maneuver, but because I was afraid she'd foot me again, there was so much toweling in the way that I had to hold the great wad around her feet with both hands. So off we went to walk the half mile home, me holding the towel-wadded hawk aloft like some kind of medieval standard. My mind was racing. What was I going to do with her when I got home? Both my hands were fully engaged. I couldn't open the basement or garage doors, because they have doorknobs, and I have yet to figure out how to open a doorknob with my foot or knee. 

As I walked up the sidewalk I saw that in my hurry, I had failed to close the main house door. And the glass storm door had a lever on it! Maybe I could get inside! 

No dice opening it with my knee or elbow. Can't be done, at least not while holding a hawk. The only appendage I had available was my chin. I have a substantial chin. Bill always said our kids owe their chins to me, since he didn't have one. My giant chin X his receding chin= normal-chinned offspring. Warily, I leaned down, holding the angry bird as far away from my face as I could, which isn't far enough. I depressed and pulled the door lever with my chin, and after a few tries was able to hook my right toe on the bottom of the barely-opened door and open it enough to admit me and my furious bundle of feathers and talons. OK. I was inside, in an enclosed space with an angry hawk. At least she wouldn't be able to get away from me while badly injured, which were the stakes out in the middle of that hayfield. 

I tottered down the basement steps, holding the hawk high. Kicked the lid off a large, blessedly empty Rubbermaid tub. Lowered the hawk and all her toweling into the tub. Grabbed the lid and latched it on. Then, and only then, did I exhale. 

Better times are coming, my love. I promise you.

And now a word from your blogger. I decided to post this on Thanksgiving because I am feeling very grateful  for all that I have been given: an interesting life in a beautiful place; the ability to share it here, with photos; and the best, sweetest, most thoughtful readers anyone could ask for. I create multi-part cliff-hangers not to torture or tease you, but because it takes me most of a day to do each one. I write them for you, and I write them for me, because making them helps me put together and process the things that happen to me as I wander through this world. Sometimes you can't grasp the gravity of a thing until you think about it long enough to wrap it up and present it to others. Knowing what is special, unrepeatable and flabbergasting; thinking outside the box of assumption; drawing connecting lines of significance, is a skill I am developing.

Nearly every day, I get shot through by bolts of grace and wonder and a kind of spiritual exaltation that I can only find outdoors, in the company of wild things. I feel my connection to birds and animals deepening and expanding into orbitals that have nothing to do with coincidence; that seem somehow ordained; and stumbling upon this hawk on an ordinary gray Friday and being charged with her rescue (and gifted with her story) is just another instance of that expansion. I don't take these bolts of grace for granted. I believe they seek me out, like those people who just seem to attract lightning. I get struck like a tentpole. It's not fun. It's hard.  Each time it happens I panic and think why me? and what am I supposed to do here? and sometimes ow, ow, ow!! even as a much older voice inside me whispers, 

"You know what to do here." 

Happy Thanksgiving. Read to your babies**, and help the wild things.

**I love you, Agnes!

Watching Pinky

Thanksgiving night, 10 pm. I'm feeling very thankful. I got a chance to cook for my little family today, and cook I did. Just me, Bill and Liam,  and we were missing Miss Phoebe badly, but oh it was so nice to be able to make a whole Thanksgiving meal. Bill made his signature mashed potatoes, and I did the turkey, stuffing, gravy, creamed limas and pearl onions, and Ida's Corn Custard.

Liam begged for corn pudding, so I riffled through my mom's recipe boxes until I found her Corn Custard. Because I know many of my readers love recipes, here 'tis, in Ida Lucile's signature backslant, on a slightly stained and yellowed card with quirky 1960's graphics. (I'm not sure what the big brownish thing is..some kind of cheese?) She was a lefty, and back in the 1920's, they forced left-handed kids to write with their right hands. Arrgh. How I love her handwriting. It's so antique, slightly tortured, and beautiful.

I used only 1 T sugar, and I had to use frozen corn, because I loathe creamed corn. Probably because my dad told me they make creamed corn from the late-season ears that have so many borers there's no other choice but to cream it. He said the ramp leading up to the processing plant would be slick with squashed borers, so much so the horses would slip and fall. OK, so this is many years ago. Horses and all that. (DOD was born in 1912).  But still. No creamed corn for me, ever. Yecccch. 

I used my fabbo stick blender, a gift from my friend Annie, to sort of grind up the frozen corn in the mix. And I baked it at 325 for an hour and it was fine. Ida was smiling down, I felt her in the kitchen with me. Ida's Corn Custard was faaaaantastic, my favorite thing on the plate. Thanks MOM!!

Lest you feel sorry for Phoebe, here's what she had while waiting out Hurricane Otto at Bocas Del Toro in Panama:

Poor lil' baby.

I put that 12-pound turkey in the oven and got the cornbread stuffing started and went outside and cut the morning glory vines, all blackened with frost, down from their trellises. I was not sad, not one bit, any more than I'm sad to take the Christmas tree down each year. They had had their season, and it was fabulous, and now they were dead and it was time for them to go, every last depressing limp bit of them. Buh-bye! I am using my deadly Soil Knife, a gift from my gardening friend Vicki, to saw and thwack them down in a matter of minutes. LOVE that tool. I gave it to Liam to cut some high vines I couldn't reach and he was so thrilled with its power, he wouldn't give it back. Now THAT's a KNIFE.

photo by Liam Thompson. Phoebe says it's BADASS and she's using it as her phone home screen. :)
Well, I can't have a buncha dead plants on the house when she comes home in 17 days, now can I??

I was so psyched to get rid of the dead vines so quickly and easily that I did all the hanging baskets and all the planters and zinnias and hostas and daylilies... I moved all the way around the house and cleaned out every bed. I've never cleaned my gardens up like this in November, but I'll be so glad I did come spring when I'm too busy to do it. That Soil Knife.  Just a sawin' off those hostas and fuchsias and salvias...seconds to level them, instead of hours of laborious hand-clipping. Wow. Thanks, Vicki, you Garden Weasel you!

But wait! this post was supposed to be about deer. Two mornings ago I peeked out the bedroom window and saw a little form sneaking through the frost-whitened goldenrod. I raced soundlessly through the house to get my camera, threw a coat over my PJ's, and went shivering out onto the deck to shoot. I had a feeling something good would happen. 

I think I know who that is. Yep, there are the little buttonbumps on his forehead. It's Pinky!

Who's a good boy?

Pinky heard someone coming through the frozen meadow. He turned and watched.

I followed his gaze to see two more deer, both does, one big and one small, picking their way through the rattling weeds.

I didn't recognize the closer one, but the big one in back looked familiar to me. She was a very handsome animal, with a pronounced high forehead.

She looked like Boss Doe, an old comrade of Ellen's, who almost always traveled with her. It made sense to me that she'd keep company with Pinky, Ellen's slightly crooked son. 

Look at her face and tell me if she doesn't look like this photo of Boss Doe from 

February 16, 2015. 

And a closeup from last February: 

This individual deer ID is pretty subtle stuff, I know, but I felt pretty sure I was seeing Boss Doe again. And that made me happy, to see her coming to meet Pinky.

She approached Pinky, and he went into full submissive posture, head down, ears back, tail fluffed, his back hunched. 

Any doubts that the big doe was Boss vanished. I'd seen this kind of interaction many times before. She always pushed Ellen and her fawns around! By now I was shivering hard but grinning like a fool, clicking away, enjoying documenting the continuum of whitetail life in our meadow.  Look at that ugly face on Boss Doe! Coiled to strike! Does lord it over young bucks, perhaps to discourage any possible teen-age notions of their trying to mate with them. Spotty's Mom has got it goin' on...

It's a standoff, then exit, stage left!

Pinky dodges by, hoping to escape a bap from Boss Doe's sharp hoof. 

He stands a moment, considering his options. 

And, being a herd animal, opts to join. He circles back to feed peacefully beside his mama's bossy friend. I heave a happy sigh that he's not alone.  Mean attention is better than nothing at all. And whitetail aggression usually looks a lot worse than it is. 

But who is the other, smaller doe? I focus in on her, searching in the hard backlighting for any clue to her identity.

She lifts a back hoof to scratch her neck, and I see the clean white stripes running down the backs of her forelegs. It's Flag! Just one more small bit of evidence that Pinky and Flag may be brother and sister, perhaps the twin fawns I saw with Ellen in mid-summer, in the same hayfield where their mother was killed.

I am filled with happiness at being able to identify my three neighbors, one I've known for years, and two others I've only just met. I'm glad the fawns are keeping company with Boss Doe. She'll push them around, tell them what to do and what not to do. These wee innocents don't know what's coming Nov. 28-Dec. 4, and can only copy the behavior of deer who do.  I envision old Boss Doe sending pictures to Pinky and Flag, that something evil this way comes.

 Pinky and Flag: stay scrawny, like your mama. Stay safe, stay here. Lay low, and I will, too. Along with your No. 1 Fan and Interpreter, there's a whole lot of people who'd love to hear from you again.

A Musical Thanksgiving

We picked the girl up and headed south, met up with Corey in Cambridge, and kept going. 

There was  a slight hitch in our plans, and it wasn't the traffic. I'd spent a couple of fruitless weeks worrying about how we were going to negotiate the traffic from Boston to Maine, back to Boston to Harvard MA to Rhode Island during Thanksgiving week. As it turned out, traveling on Monday night, Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning was no problem at all. We managed to miss the crowds. I'm pretty proud of our logisticizing. We prevailed. Never sat in a jam at all. 

We sat in on a jam, though....video at 11, below!

But one absolutely terrible thing happened. Phoebe forgot her mascara. Harrible! And her mother doesn't wear it so she could borrow some! Even harribler! What to do? What to do? Put a bag over her head? No, that would be bad. 

WE HAD TO FIND PRINCESS SOME MASCARA!!

We began a quest for a store that was open on Thanksgiving morning. Nothing doing. 

Massachusetts was a mascara desert. Durn blue laws. Cain't buy booze, makeup,  nuffin' there on a holiday!

Rhode Island was devoid of black eyegoop, too. We checked every Wal-Mart and Target, every Rite-Aid and CVS. All locked up tighter than Jack Benny's wallet. It became a vision quest. Phoebe had long rolled her white-lashed eyes and given up, but we were still on it. ON IT. We would find mascara on Thanksgiving day!! Mascara jokes flew. Finally, only four minutes from our final destination in Barrington, RI, we found a CVS that was open! Liam and Corey skipped down the aisle after poor Phoebs, who took all the ribbing in good humor. She was getting her mascara after all. And a headband, too.

Everyone knows CVS has the best mascara. Bill tries a little blonde fall on Corey.

Phoebe finds the right headband at last.

Mascara obtained, we jumped back in the car. Not ten minutes after we got to my niece's house along the Rhode Island coast, Bill whipped out his guitar and Corey got out his fiddle and the music began. 

My nephew Evan, a brilliant engineer who also juggles fire, played along. 

Max was enchanted by the fiddle tunes. He wasn't alone. 

There was a lot of musical power in that room. David on guitar, Tera enjoying it all.

There was magic in the air. Everyone stepped lighter, worked faster, laughed more spontaneously.

Then there was a break, with outdoor dodgeball and everybody getting booped with plastic kickballs.

Finally it was time to serve the dinner, a team effort by most of the 21 Zickefoose/Dorsky/Salter/Kemp/Thompson people in attendance.

Some of the food was warmed up at the neighbor's house, and came over in a procession of hotmitts up the sidewalk. I loved that.

My niece, Karen and her husband Jason and their terrific boys Max and Will; their wonderful spacious house, the gracious hosts of the gathering. 

The food was amazing and abundant. Max and Will made the nametags and chose where everyone would sit.

And because the main course wasn't enough, pies and real whipped cream, homemade cookies and biscotti.

Sweet little girls, better than real whipped cream. Maddie arranges magnetic letters.

Her sister, raven-haired Clara, rides a mighty tall horse. 

After dinner, the obligatory walk. But this one had wigeon, black ducks, an Atlantic brant and a common loon, and enough optics to pass around for all to appreciate them! It doesn't get any better than that!

Phoebe and Liam walk along the inlet to the brackish marsh.

Liam pauses to to consider the sky in the water. 

 I'm so grateful to have had this time with my family, after so many years away on this holiday. It made sense to come East, pick up our girl and her guy, and head to the coast. Phoebe's choosing Maine for college has had some very beautiful, if rawther expensive, repercussions. Each time we visit I feel like I've been on a mini-vacation. Talk about a change of channel from southeast Ohio!
Seeing them together fills my heart.

I made an iPhone video of Corey and Bill and assorted others playing "Cotton-eyed Joe" to share with you. I can't describe how profoundly their music transformed the gathering. Better for you to see it yourself. People float in and out of the circle, bouncing to the beat, dancing, playing, smiling.  Liam picks up a Baby Dear doll and goofs around. Yes, it IS a doll! Sweet little kids drift in, pick up an instrument, join in and play along as best they can. That's the whole idea.

           

My sisters Barbara, Nancy and Micky. All salt of the earth, all formidable cooks and, if I may say so, exemplary mothers. So, so good to see them again. Barb and I, in a dead heat for who looks more like our mom, Ida.

As we were taking these last photos, a pair of red-tailed hawks flapped up and landed in the tippy-top of a nearby fir, watching the whole procedure and the good-byes. We all knew who sent them. Come on. A wooded suburb right on the coast? Is that typical redtail habitat? They were dispatched to watch over us. This iPhone photo looks like nothing, of course, but the pair sat in the smaller fir, looking right at us, for as long as we were gathered and taking photos in the front yard.

Music has always been a part of our family gatherings, on both the Zickefoose and Thompson sides. This Thanksgiving was one to remember.  I am so grateful to have these wonderful people in my life. This truly was a thanks-giving.