raptor parking lot. “Come on, I’ll help you fly that bad girl of yours.”
* * *
Cari wasn’t surprised that Chase knew his way around raptors. Just a few days earlier, Jenny had told her he held a falcon and eagle’s license in the US. That impressed her. It was good that he was familiar with all the different areas of his ranch that were making money for him. She was sure Mary was the driving force behind it, but her son truly liked the different mix of environmental businesses they worked hard to bring about.
Why wasn’t this man married? Or have a partner? It made no sense to her.
She went to her locker to get her flight glove, then went to the refrigerator to pull out some mouse meat for her charge. Buckling up the pouch around her waist that would carry it, she walked out to the well-protected raptor housing area. When she turned the corner, she heard Valkyrie’s shrill greeting. She began flying back and forth in her cage, lighting on the entrance/exit to her cage door, then flying back and forth once more.
Over time, Cari came to realize her hawk not only recognized her, but this was Valkyrie’s way of showing her excitement and joy at seeing her once again. It was her “hawk greeting.”
“Chase called you a bad girl,” she told Valkyrie as the bird came and landed on the perch next to the door. Opening it, she gently placed the soft leather jesses around Valkyrie’s thick yellow legs. The hawk leaned forward, and Cari double-checked to make sure those jesses were placed correctly. Valkyrie ruffled her beak through Cari’s hair.
Giggling, Cari pulled back. “Val!” she said, “you’re tickling my scalp!”
The hawk made soft little shrill sounds, much like a baby raptor would to its mother. It was a sound of “feed me.” Pulling a small bit of mouse meat out of her pouch, she gave Valkyrie some. The hawk flapped her wings and gobbled it quickly, her yellow eyes shining with joy.
“Are you going to be a good girl today?” Cari asked drolly, threading the hanging leather from the jesses between her gloved fingers.
Instantly, the hawk leaped upon her glove, which was just below Cari’s elbow. Carefully pulling her arm out of the door, hawk on board, she locked the cage and then turned around, picking up her green baseball cap. “Let’s go, girl. Chase is out there waiting for us. You’re gonna get your tail feathers flown off today. A real workout. And no creance line, so you’d better not fly off to that grove of trees!”
Once out on the flight oval, two metal landing T’s at either end, Valkyrie began chutting excitedly. She saw Chase put a bit of meat up on the T. He moved away.
Cari unwound the jesses, which were much shorter than normal, for flight oval flying. Instantly, Valkyrie flapped and took to the air. The flight oval was half a mile in length, and a good place to train and strengthen an injured hawk like her, to return her to the wild.
Cari laughed as she saw the hawk make a beeline for that T, widening her wings, tail down, yellow legs straight out in front of her, those mighty talons of hers opened. The instant she landed, gone was the meat!
She saw Chase’s expression, a big smile on his face as the magnificent raptor landed and then shrieked. Instantly Valkyrie did a ballet move, facing Cari, watching her put meat up on her T. Off she went like an arrow shot out of a bow! Although she was a red-tail, she had the juvenile markings of a white breast with long, black vertical oval feathers and no red on her tail. Only mature red-tails, who were five years or older, got that gorgeous rust-red coloration that could be seen easily by everyone.
For the next twenty minutes, Valkyrie flew and snacked on mouse meat. It was a good workout for the hawk, who, Jenny said, would be released shortly. She had regained her proper weight and from all signals, Valkyrie would know how to hunt. Cari just hoped the silly, immature hawk with the hot temperament wouldn’t continue her canopy-tree-crashing antics. That would kill her, at worst, and injure her out in the wild, most likely breaking her wing, rendering her unable to fly and she would eventually starve to death. Cari didn’t want to think in those directions, but with wild things, she had to.
Chase rejoined her at the