* ( VIDEO ) *
A Profile in Courage
The late sun finds a crack in the
clouds to aim into a westbound windshield where the road cranks hard right at a
hilltop. Last night at that curve an opossum (hereinafter possum) wandered into the road and today's glare gives a glimpse of a
large bird astride the remains. An
instinctive jerk of the wheel puts my car into the oncoming lane, at that
moment vacant as I am able to report. I
pull off the road, needing a look at this strange, defiant chicken refusing to
yield to traffic.
I can tell you what I see, but I
cannot describe the sadness. The bird
has a ragged wing, a crippled foot, and a tail the color of a faded fire truck. It
struggles to hold down its meal with one functioning foot, to balance with one
working wing as it tears at morsels of marsupial. A car climbs the hill. The
driver reads the road and eases over.
Another, just behind, yanks her wheel at the last instant. The wrecked
and famished hawk bends to the possum as if it has no choice, trusting somehow
in a universal kindness, standing tall as cars pass but yielding not an inch.
Car after truck passes the poignant
scene. Drivers, bewildered and uncertain at the mayhem in
the road, shake it off with quizzical shrugs, perhaps a frown of sympathy. But the outcome seems inevitable
and I can not bear to be a witness. I can't but recall that
the last injured Red-tailed Hawk I tried to help treated me to a trip to the ER,
blood spurting through a welding glove. I have no glove today and hawk and possum
could hardly have chosen a more parlous platform for their drama. There is no point in adding a human carcass.
So I leave, but the scene travels
with me. No, the bird has no choice; a steep bank blocks its way off the road and
it cannot fly. No, I was right not to intervene because the
bird’s chances, sparse on a hilltop curve, may be no better under the triage
protocol of a resource-strapped raptor center. And might it fly again, ever, or soar only in
Valhalla?
Or can it fly? Desperation drove the lamed and gaunt raptor to
the road kill, but the bird didn’t hitch hike to get there. And there is
a universal kindness that responds with an involuntary wheel jerk
to the courage and determination of another hunter badly behind in the race for
life. In my hopes the bird drags its full crop and battered being to the low
side of the road and launches, listing and lurching, for a perch to rest and
digest.
