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| Volunteer Jonathan Smith releases an oprhaned barn owl. Melissa Hart |
Helping hands to injured birds of prey
In Oregon, volunteers endure scrapes, scars, and sometimes all-out attacks to help raptors in need of rehabilitation.
from the August 7, 2007 edition
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These small triumphs inspire retired Army helicopter pilot Stan Perry to make the 75-minute drive from Salem, Ore. to the center each Thursday for his four-hour shift. Perry snaps to attention as he ducks into the clinic. He scans stacks of sheet-covered pet carriers, the injured patients quiet within, and studies a board covered with a multicolored code of letters and numbers.
"COHA 108," he reads. "1 c/u M 3 TID." Skilled at flight and combat, Perry spent months learning to translate this chicken-scratch into "Cooper's Hawk number 108, 1 cut-up mouse to be fed three times a day." Overcoming the queasiness such instructions inspire in some beginning volunteers took time for Perry – a man otherwise cool enough to relate the time a Vietcong soldier had him in his cross-hairs.
"Volunteering here makes me more anxious than anything I ever felt in the Army," he says. "You have to get things just right or a bird could die."
Part of that anxiety may come from the tight ship Shimmel runs: Each volunteer must commit to a four-hour – at the same time, on the same day – shift a week . "Treat your shift like a job," Shimmel admonishes prospective volunteers. "Two unexcused absences is grounds for dismissal."
Like her volunteers, Shimmel has also worked frenetic, high-stress day jobs. Before she discovered raptor rehabilitation, she worked in investment banking in Madrid. Disillusioned a year later, she came to Eugene and worked in different corporate jobs before rehabilitating a few injured birds as a hobby.
"It was instantly obvious when I got into rehab that this was it for me, I was 36, and I thought, 'Finally,'" she says. Not long after, she founded the CRC.
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Almost every day, groups from area schools, day camps, or retirement homes come to Shimmel's center for formal natural history programs. It's not uncommon to hear stunned laughter and applause for the great horned owl who swallows a mouse whole or, even better, drops it on her handler's foot.
But the greater good of all the education isn't enough to dispel the unease some feel when wandering past cage after cage of permanently injured birds.
"I don't like zoos. I'm not sure it's OK that these raptors are caged," one visitor, his young toddler in tow, told me recently.
"Wait here for a moment," I told him, going to get the baby barred owl I'd been glove-training over the summer.
"This is Bodhi," I said. "He's a barred owl who got blown out of his nest and broke his wing. He can't fly well enough to hunt, but he'll live here to teach people about barred owls in the wild."
The man's eyes grew as round as those of the bird on my glove. "Look, Antonio!" he said, pointing at Bodhi's white breast feathers, each with a distinctive brown stripe. "Owl."
"Owl!" Antonio repeated.
Boy and bird stared at each other. Their connection felt electric, instantly recognizable. This is the moment that snags you – quick as a hawk takes a mid air songbird– and compels you to donate a chunk of your life to these creatures. Like this child, volunteers know the secret of CRC. Once a raptor gets its talons into you, you're prey to its grandeur.
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