Urban Wildlife II: A Providential Surprise

מה-רבו מעשיך יהוה כולם בחכמה עשית
מלאה הארץ קניינך

As many of you already know, I am an ardent lover of all things nature. Any and all living beings; whether furry, feathered, or finned I count amongst my friends though, as expected, they do not and cannot always reciprocate the sentiment. Today, however, something happened that elevated those already high sentiments to an entirely new level. It was something that 99.999999% of humanity will never experience and perhaps never even consider as possible. This very day, from within the midst of the mundane, I touched the life of a member of an endangered species. Its life has been saved, and mine has also been altered in a special way, though perhaps with a bit less urgency, tumult, and loss of plasma.

Who would have thought that a 'nobody' Jew from Brooklyn would find himself linked with one of the rarest and finest species of bird, and, to compound the irony, to have this occur right smack in the middle of a humdrum average workday in the center of a busy city? Certainly I never would have envisioned anything like it or the circumstances through which this contact came to be. One would expect such a thing to happen to a park ranger atop a rocky cliff, and not to a grey-collar desk jockey in the city. Imagine for a moment, you are now quite unexpectedly confronted with something rare, beautiful, magnificent, and yet fragile; weighing the option to safeguard its existence or to casually ignore its presence. It is as if millions of years of Nature have been placed right at your feet. For myself, there was never a choice in the matter.

While sitting at my desk sorting through the usual stacks of files, papers, tickets, invoices, and other such forms and folders that make my job the inspirational event it is, I was informed in passing that a large bird, identified first as a small hawk, had been wounded, and was hobbling around in the snow across the street from our office. Without any hesitation whatsoever, being the nature lover and always interested in wildlife, I dropped everything and leaped into action. It’s easy to get me away from my desk most of the time anyhow. I thought for a brief moment, as I was heading out the door to investigate, that my employer would probably be at least a little upset at my leaving the office for a non-work related incident such as animal rescue, and figured that if he was such a person who would object my saving the life of a living thing, that I wouldn’t want to be working for him in any case. Of course, they know me all too well, and offered no objections to my impending absence. (Fortunately, the whole affair only took an hour or so to resolve, and soon enough I was back at my desk, once again dreaming of being somewhere else.)

As soon as I reached the sidewalk, sure enough, atop a mound of snow partially grayed by passing cars and rock salt sat an adolescent Peregrine Falcon, one of the rarest birds in the Midwest, and still on the endangered species list in many states and throughout Canada. From the coloring and streaks on its face it appeared to be a male. I had never seen one this close before. Its left wing had been hurt somehow and was bleeding, leaving a trail of pinkish-brown spots in the snow as it hopped away from my approach in an effort to make an escape. I raced back to my car, from where I retrieved the necessary tools for trapping the poor creature, as I generally cart around what I might need for any number of small emergencies should the occasion arise. Patience is, of course, the key to handling any creature, man or beast, and the peregrine, long cherished as a hunting companion, is already psychologically predisposed to contact with man. Peregrines were the favorites of falconers for many centuries. Songbirds seldom survive human contact, even when that contact is benevolent, unlike their larger predatory counterparts.

This bird was badly wounded but still feisty enough to elude my first attempts at snaring it. Armed with a soft voice, a bit of patience, a pair of ski gloves, and a large box I inched my way closer to the grounded bird until I was able to gently cradle it in my hands and place it into the box. The falcon had cornered itself against a chain-link fence, leaving itself no other avenue of escape. It was clearly stressed, too, which was evident from its open-mouth ventilating. Since birds are not rabid, I had no worry about being scratched or bitten. My hands are chewed up from work and the cats anyhow, and any pain I would have had to endure to save the falcon would have been well worth it considering the payoff.

The capture was relatively easy as captures go. The next challenge would be transporting the injured bird to a state-approved facility for veterinary care and rehabilitation. I made several quick and sometimes angry phone calls and finally, after several tries, found a veterinarian able to take the falcon in right away. (One would be amazed at how many clinics offer ‘emergency’ service and yet have answering machines or voice mail greetings as their front line response to frantic pet owners and animal rescuers.) It was a nice bonus that this facility was within a few miles of my office. I would, if it had come down to it, driven hundreds of miles to save this amazing creature, but I'm still glad that I didn't have to. Left flightless from injury in the cold and wet while being exposed to stray dogs, cats, and stupid humans, this falcon would not have been long for this world. It certainly stood a better chance of survival in the back seat of my Jeep, though the experience of being cooped up could not have been a pleasant one, even when cuddled up with an old sweatshirt left inside the box for warmth and padding.

It is nothing short of Providential that news of the bird should reach me at such a time and in such a place. It is no small coincidence and damned lucky for that bird to have been injured within sight and range of probably the onlyperson in a five mile radius who a)knew what it was, b)knew what to do, and c) was available and willing to do it. When many people object to certain aspects of Evolution, they tend to overlook a most important and crucial part of it; the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time. No creature, no matter how well suited to its environs, how fast or strong, or however well bred can exist for very long without facing up to the vagaries of luck, and survival depends as much on empty fate as it does biological predisposition. Luck is not something that you can classify as a mechanism, and though statistical analysis offers us insight into probabilities, luck remains left out of the Evolutionary conversation.

Last report the Peregrine was doing fine, and other than a broken wing, blood loss, and the stress of injury there seemed to be nothing seriously wrong with the bird. As updates come in, I will post them. The falcon is scheduled for rehabilitation in one of the state-approved wildlife centers and this reluctant fool plans on keeping up with its progress every step of the way. It is not everyday one gets to participate in preserving nature, let alone the uncommon opportunity to save something as rare and unique as the Peregrine Falcon. I am humbled and honored to have done some small part, though I know that Evolution will not remember me at all when the day is done. To be forgotten is not the worst thing they can say about you after you’re gone.

I can go into the history of the Peregrine Falcon, its physiology, habitat, and other important facts, but there are a number of informative links that do a much better job. Here are a couple of good sites for more information:

http://raysweb.net/specialplaces/pages/falcon.html

http://www.nature.ca/notebooks/english/pfalcon.htm

“Whatever else may be shaken, there are some facts established beyond warring; for virtue is better than vice, truth is better than falsehood, kindness than brutality. These, like love, never fail.” (Quintin Hogg 1845-1903)