By Sarah the Intern
So, admittedly, I’ve been a bad intern and didn’t post last week. I know, you’re all terribly disappointed. A lot has happened in two weeks. First off is some bad news. Our little saw whet took a turn for the worse and did not survive. Once again, we are in the “market” for a little owl so if anyone hears anything about a little owl needing a home, please let us know. This last week my parents sacrificed their time (and my dad’s foot) to come and see me, which I really appreciated. I also had presentations to do in Yellowstone National Park, affording me some close encounters with the local bison.
In other bad news, Brandon had to leave us on Thursday, August 9. Suli the turkey vulture was heartbroken. Compounding the issue, it turns out that volunteers actually have lives too (shocking, I know). Even more surprising, it turns out that they actually need to live their lives every once in a while. It’s almost like they’re people or something (says the intern). This leaves us incredibly short handed, but also gives us the opportunity to try out our two-person version of the show. Turns out that it works really well. Unfortunately for the audience, we can’t fly Suli if we only have two people. But that might not be such a bad thing.
Suli is just starting to fly for shows again after some…um…let’s call them technical difficulties. The first one came while Brandon was still here. During a show, Suli was, as usual, less than enthusiastic to fly to me. Brandon offered her a little encouragement, and she flew…over my head. She ended up over the fence, still tied to the creance line. While I tried to pretend to the audience that I wasn’t incredibly embarrassed, Brandon had to open the gate and fetch a very confused Suli from the ground.
The second incident had nothing to do with me, and we have yet to figure out what exactly happened. Suli was flying from Patrick (awesome volunteer) to Melissa. She left Patrick’s glove, made a b-line for Melissa’s glove…and flew right past her. This time she had to be fetched from the roof. This folks, is why you always keep your bird tied to a creance line for small flights.
Now I know you may be wondering why Suli had to be fetched in the first place. You have to understand that, while Suli is perfectly physically capable of flying back to us, she doesn’t know that she’s a bird. Every flight to a different place is new, and everything new is TERRIFYING. Now that everyone has been given a crash course in proper line handling, we’re back to flying her for shows and she is doing a great job.
We do have another bit of good news this week. Last week we tried out a free program system. Those of us who have fallen in love with these birds want as many people as possible to see them and fall in love with them with us. In order to reach that goal, we decided to try to go free for a week and see if we could support ourselves on donations alone. I am pleased to report that we did so well attendance- and donation-wise that the higher ups agreed to let us extend the free period to the rest of the summer! The Center is lucky to be run by people willing to try new things and make compromises. Cross your fingers that our luck continues.
Falconry Terms in Layman’s Terms
Falconry Term: Creance
Falconry Definition: A long, light, strong cord or line used to secure a hawk during training flights.
Layman’s Terms: A long, light, strong cord or line used to gently yank a petrified turkey vulture off a roof…gently of course.
