Flyaway (15 page)

His head snapped back in my direction, and slowly he cocked his head to the side. Anything good on the menu?

Cuídate mucho, mi pájaro guapo. Que tu vida sea llena de cosas buenas.

Take care, my handsome bird. May your life be filled with good things.

I bought a programmable space heater, a long table, and a set of plastic drawers. The shed was drywalled and painted. John installed a fluorescent ceiling light and a spotlight over the exam table, which was an old card table I had dug out of the basement. The kids helped me move in all the crates and equipment I had accumulated. I made a sign:

 

BRING THEM BACK, THEN LET THEM GO

 

and we hung it over the doorway.

Occasionally I would refer to it grandiosely as “the Clinic,” but mostly it was “the shed.” And once it was set up, I was ready to go to my first New York State Wildlife Rehabilitation Council Conference.

Wildlife rehabilitators have a surprising number of groups they can join: the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association, the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council, and the International Association of Avian Trainers and Educators, as well as various state and local associations. Most host yearly multiday conferences where rehabbers can attend lectures, participate in labs, go on field trips, buy all kinds of supplies, and schmooze with kindred spirits. At its yearly conference, the New York State Wildlife Rehabilitation Council (NYSWRC, pronounced “nicework”) honors a veterinarian for his or her out
standing work with wildlife. This year it would be Wendy, who had been nominated by Maggie and Joanne.

The conference was in upstate New York, the award ceremony the first night. During the first day I attended lectures on avian antibiotics, the reintroduction of bluebirds, wound management, caging for injured accipiters, and a lab on principles of fluid therapy. I wandered through the sales area and bought the basic medical supplies I was missing, all the while thinking that I'd better get cracking on my money-making newsletter. I found Denise, who had sent the heron to me, as well as several other rehabbers I had met through the years. I chatted with rehabbers I'd never met, all of whom were cheerful and friendly and welcomed me as one of their own.

When the dinner hour arrived I entered the dining room and quickly spotted Maggie, Joanne, Wendy, and Wendy's husband, biologist Fred Koontz. As I made my way toward them I passed a table where five or six rehabbers were eating heartily, all listening to a woman describe a raccoon who had been caught in a trap.

“This deep,” she said, putting down her buttered roll and holding her fingers two inches apart. “The tendon's in ribbons. I go poking around inside, and the whole thing is filled with maggots.”

Instead of recoiling in horror, her dining companions leaned closer. “Was it necrotic?” demanded a man sitting nearby, holding his lasagna-laden fork in midair. “Any gangrene?”

I felt a quick rush of exhilaration:
it was dinner time, yet my conversational topics were limitless.

I didn't know the four other people at Wendy's table. I took the empty chair between Maggie and a friendly-looking woman, and introduced myself.

“Jean Soprano,” the woman replied, shaking my hand. “From Pennellville.”

“What do you do?” I asked her.

“Bears,” she said.

“Get out!” I said, before I could stop myself.

“I do!” she said. “All the large carnivores—bears, coyotes, bobcats, foxes, raptors.”

“You have to come visit me,” I said, “so you can tell my husband how good he has it.”

“Get Jean to tell you a bear story,” said a man sitting across the table.

“Please!” I said to her. “Tell me a bear story!”

“Come on, Jean!” urged the other three.

“Okay, okay,” said Jean good-naturedly. “Here's a good one. This just happened, so none of you have heard it. So, one night about ten o'clock a couple is driving down a dark road in one of those little hatchbacks. They come around a corner and right in the middle of the road is a big female black bear. The guy slams on his brakes, skids down the road, and bang! Plows right into the bear. Knocks her cold.”

“Ahh! Arghh! Oh, no! Poor thing! How badly was she hurt?” the whole table chorused. When it comes to stories involving cars and wildlife, there is no better audience than a group of rehabbers.

“The couple both jump out of their car and run over to the bear, who is lying unconscious in the middle of the road,” continued Jean. “They were really upset, and they didn't have a cell phone, and they didn't know what to do, so somehow—and don't ask me how they did this, she was a big bear—they pick her up and put her in the back of their little tiny car.”

“They put a
bear
into the
back
of their
car
?” we all gasped.

“Then they drove like hell home. They get home and the bear's still out, so they back the car up to the garage, haul her out of the car and onto a blanket, then they shut the garage door and run inside, where they proceed to call everyone they know. Everyone either asks if they're crazy or hangs up on them.

“Finally they call the dog warden, who says she'll be right there. The dog warden arrives—all five foot two inches, ninety pounds of her—and immediately takes charge. All three of them go back into the garage, where the bear's still out, and they pick her up and put her into the dogcatcher truck, and the bear and the dog warden go off.

“The dog warden brings her to a local rehabber, and the two of them get the bear—who's still out—into a big crate and latch the door. The rehabber calls me, I arrive the next morning, and we put the crate, with the bear inside it, into the back of my car. At this point the bear is conscious but still groggy, so I head off to my vet, John Davis, who works with another vet, Kevin Hammerschmidt. As we're all dragging the crate into an exam room John discovers that the latch is broken, which means that at any time during the hour's drive to their office she could have gotten out and I would have had a groggy bear loose in my car, just like that couple in the beginning of the story.”

The gathered rehabbers were all howling with laughter, wiping tears from their eyes and elbowing each other in the ribs; Jean, laughing herself, tried her best to continue.

“John and Kevin open the door a crack to look inside, and evidently the bear was feeling better, because she comes barreling out and starts trying to dig a hole through the office wall. So they throw on their big gloves and wrestle her down and give her a shot of tranquilizer, then as soon as she conks out again they drag her over to the X-ray machine and find out she has no fractures, just a concussion and probably a whopper of a headache. They put her in the crate and wire it shut, and put the whole thing back in my car, and when I finally drove away I could tell they were really, really happy to see me go. The bear spent three weeks with me and then I released her way up north.”

We all clapped, drank more wine, and swapped more stories, and later gave Wendy a standing ovation when she received her award. I returned home two days later bursting with inspiration, my wallet crammed with phone numbers and my notebooks heavy with information. John and the kids detailed their lives since I had been away, including sporadic sightings of our released birds, appearing occasionally for food but all of whom were spending more and more time away from the yard.

We saw Null and Void more than the others, although they, too, would disappear for days at a time. Then one Sunday afternoon Mac and I were clearing barberry bushes from an area halfway down the driveway when we heard a
strange sound. It was loud and grating, as if a heavy metal object was being dragged down a concrete road. Mac and I glanced around, then at each other. “Grackle migration!” he said.

As we hurried up the driveway the huge flock of grackles flew over our heads and blanketed the woods around the house, perching on tree limbs, poking through the fallen leaves, and emptying the bird feeders, all chattering noisily and turning the land dark with their sheer numbers. Skye hurried out of the house and John out of his office, and we all sat on the deck to watch the spectacle. A half hour later they began to disperse. For the next two days the huge group would come through once or twice a day, eat the seed we'd thrown on the ground, and take off again. One day they failed to appear, signaling that they had moved on and that we wouldn't see them again until the following fall.

For a month I continued to put out the usual plate of grackle food. It would be eaten by an assortment of passing birds or, if it wasn't gone by nightfall, finished off by an opossum or coyote. But our swaggering yellow-eyed bandits were gone.

“They joined the other grackles,” said Skye firmly. “They have a family now.”

“A really huge family,” said Mac. “Think about it—it would be like having a thousand Skyes around you all the time.”

“Shut up, Mac!” said Skye.

Putting on my sweats I ran to where the woods were thick with sugar maples. The late October sun poured through their brilliant yellow leaves, turning the forest into a glorious, glowing cathedral. I sat on a fallen tree deep in the radiant woods, as I did every year, listening to the birdcalls and running my hands through the crisp autumn air. Believing, just for a moment, that the world was a perfect place.

“White or dark meat?” asked my brother Skip, who was hosting that year's Thanksgiving dinner.

“Uh…” I said, hoping no one would notice the question. “I'll have a drumstick,” I whispered.

“Why are we whispering?” he hissed loudly.

“
I know why!
” trumpeted Skye from across the room. “
You're not eating turkey, are you? How could you?”

“That's nice,” said Mac darkly. “Now you can go home and tell Gravy you ate one of her cousins.”

“But I'm not actually eating Gravy,” I said.

“Why can't you eat gravy?” asked Skip, who had grown used to my various obsessions. “Because of all the little flour particles that had to die?”

“Gravy is a wild turkey,” John explained. “She's home in our clinic.”

“Mom named her Gravy,” said Mac, “even though I said it was inappropriate.”

“I named her Wavy Gravy,” I said. “I keep telling you, if you're offended by Gravy call her Wavy. Personally,” I said to Skip, “I just call her The Turkey.”

“Wavy Gravy was before your time,” said John to my brother. “He was a counterculture hero of the sixties.”

“And now you've named a wild turkey after him,” said Skip. “Should I dare to ask why?”

“You don't want to know,” I said.

The turkey in question had arrived a few weeks earlier, after Bonnie and Gary Van Asselt, two local birders, had watched her fall to the ground after she attempted to fly to a low branch in their yard. Searching for help, they found me through the birding grapevine. I told them to bring her over and raced off to my purple three-ring binder to look up “wild turkeys,” then hurried out to the shed to set up an area for her.

I had spent the last few weeks gathering an impressive assortment of donated items: waterproof tarps, more crates, another table, old blankets and towels, a large egg-crate foam mattress, bowls, pans, a long foldable dog pen, and various bird food items—including a large half-bag of turkey pellets. I covered one corner of the shed floor with a tarp and several layers of newspaper, then cut a rectanglar section of the egg-crate mattress and covered it with a towel. The turkey would be a double pioneer: my first wild turkey, and the first bird in my shed.

Bonnie and Gary arrived with a large cardboard box. When I lifted the turkey out she staggered, favored her left leg, and seemed slightly dazed. I wrapped her in a towel, told her rescuers they could call back in a few days to check on her, and carried her out to her hospital room. When I put her on the floor she lurched over to her towel-covered bed and sank down, regarding her surroundings with half-lidded eyes, as if it were all she could do to stay awake.

She was thin but had no wounds or broken bones, nor could I see any signs of bruising. She did seem especially warm to the touch, and I could hear a slight click in her lungs as she breathed. I gave her fluids, and an hour later she picked at a few turkey pellets soaked in warm water. Normally I never touch an adult wild bird if I can help it, especially new ones. But for some reason as I was getting ready to leave I reached out and touched her gently on the side of her face. In response she slowly lowered her head until it rested on my upturned palm, then closed her eyes.

“Bonnie!” I said through the telephone, soon afterward. “Was that a tame turkey you brought me this afternoon?”

“No,” said Bonnie. “She's part of a big flock that comes to our feeder every afternoon, but they're not friendly. I couldn't get near any of them, until today.”

When I called the Croton Animal Hospital the following day I discovered it was Dr. Popolow's day off. “But Dr. Hoskins is here,” said Charlene Congello, the receptionist, helpfully. “Maybe he can see your turkey.”

Soon I was on my way to the hospital, the turkey riding in a large dog crate in the back of the car. As I pulled into the parking lot I considered asking one of the technicians to help me carry the entire crate into the office. But since everyone at the hospital—the vets, receptionists, technicians, and animal handlers—were dealing with these wild birds and me out of the goodness of their hearts, I didn't want to push it. I stuck my head in the office door, greeted Charlene, made sure the coast was clear, and returned to the car. Wrapping the turkey in a large towel, I carried her into an examination room.

Despite her condition she was a striking bird. Her feathers, beautifully patterned in white, brown, and black, had a dazzling metallic sheen and her head, wrinkled and wattled, was a delicate watercolor of red and blue. She lay quietly, surveying the room with huge brown eyes. She looked kindly but startled, like someone's elderly aunt who, after several days of feeling poorly, had suddenly found herself dumped into the middle of a busy casino.

In a few minutes a tall man wearing a lab coat entered the room. “Bruce Hoskins,” he said, extending his hand.

Working with Dr. Hoskins is the closest I will ever get to vet school. Whenever he examines one of my birds he gives me an impromptu tutorial on the injury, the system involved, the surounding skeletal structure, and the pros and cons of various drugs, until my head feels like it will explode with information. Few experiences can be more terrifying to a wild bird than a veterinary exam, but Bruce's gentle manner always seems to make a bad situation better.

Bruce listened to me recount her history, looked her over, and then took her
into the back for an X-ray. The X-ray showed no lead—always a possibility—but did show a cloudiness in her lungs. “What do you think?” I asked.

“Hmm,” he said gravely, looking up from his notes. “I'd say 350 degrees for four hours.”

I burst out laughing. “I'm sorry,” I said to the turkey, wiping my eyes. “But you have to admit you're kind of a comical figure.”

Bruce said it could be pneumonia and prescribed a round of antibiotics, adding that if she didn't improve he would do blood tests. I gathered up the turkey and headed home, hoping that antibiotics, food, and rest would do the trick.

She spent the next three days either resting or sleeping on her towel-covered bed. For two days she wouldn't eat, so I had to syringe liquid food through a long rubber tube down her throat and into her crop. On the third day she started picking at the food I'd left in her pen. The following day I opened the door and found that a good portion of her food had disappeared and she was standing and preening, a clear indication that she was feeling better.

By coincidence, one afternoon I received one of those “nuisance wildlife” calls, a few dozen of which I had fielded during the summer. Usually the caller, who has just moved into a brand-new subdivision ripped and blasted out of a formerly beautiful woodland, is exasperated to find that there are actually wild animals in the vicinity and wants to know how to get rid of them. I learned at the conference that “I'm sorry, but I've already promised the animals that I'd help them get rid of
you
,” is not the correct response, and that I should seize the opportunity for education. I try, but some callers are more difficult than others.

“My name is Dr. B——,” said the male voice. “And I'm having a terrible problem with a wild turkey. I live in a very exclusive area and I paid a great deal of money for our home. This turkey is injured, he can't put any weight on his leg, and he keeps hanging around and doing his…his…business on my imported limestone. Can you come and get rid of him?”

“Uh-oh,” said Skye, looking up from her homework and seeing my expression.

“You'll have to catch him,” I said. “Throw a blanket over him, then pick him up and put him in your garage. I live an hour away from you, so I don't want to drive down and find out he's not there.”

“Oh, no!” said Dr. B——. “I'm not going to touch him!”

“Look,” I said, “try to work with me here. If he can't put any weight on his leg it's probably broken, so he won't be hard to catch.”

“Broken!” said the astonished Dr. B——. “Turkeys have bones in their legs?”

“Do turkeys have bones in their legs?” I repeated. “What kind of a doctor are you?”

“An orthopedic surgeon,” he replied.

Meanwhile, our turkey was feeling better. I debated putting her in the flight cage. On one hand, the clicking in her lungs was gone and she needed more space; on the other, she hadn't gained any weight and the October nights were chilly. I ended up putting her into the more natural environment of the flight cage. I was quite pleased with my decision until the following morning, when I went to feed her and discovered a nasty wet rasp emanating from her chest. I described it over the phone to Bruce, and soon the turkey and I were back in his office.

I had chalked up her original tame manner to sickness and weakness, but she remained docile and easy to work with despite her improvement in health. Bruce entered the room, looked at the turkey standing matter-of-factly on the table and me leaning casually against the wall, and raised his eyebrows; in return I gave him an elaborate shrug, and we went on from there. He listened to the turkey's loud, rattling breathing, then anesthetized her for a tracheal wash, in which a tiny bit of liquid is syringed directly into the lungs, sucked back out again, and analyzed. Afterward he took another X-ray, then held it up to the light and pointed to her lungs.

“This is a different view, but you can still see the cloudiness,” he said. “I took some blood, which I'll also send out. But if she's also not gaining weight it's probably aspergillosis.”

Aspergillosis is a respiratory disease caused by fungus. Many wild birds harbor the fungus, which does them no harm unless they become sick or
stressed. I moved the turkey back into the shed, where it was warm and dry. Since there were no other birds in residence, at night she slept in a large crate and during the day she was free to move around. She either walked about the floor or hopped up on the table next to the window, where I'd see her small head peering out at me when I approached.

“It's asper,” said Bruce, calling later that week with the test results. “I'd like to put her on ciprofloxacin as well as itraconazole, but these drugs are expensive. I'll call the prescriptions into one of our pharmacies, then you can call and find out how much we're talking about.”

I dialed the number, apprehensively wondering how much it could be. What if it was…say…a hundred dollars?

“A month's worth of the two prescriptions…” said the pharmacist. “Let's see; that would come out to about eight hundred dollars.”

“What?” I sputtered. “Are you kidding?”

“I'm afraid not,” he said. “And if you do give the turkey the drugs, you have to check with the Food & Drug Administration to see how long you have to keep her off them before you let her go.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because if you let her go and somebody shoots her and eats her, they could be affected by the drugs she's been on.”

“Get out,” I said weakly.

“I'm going to make a file, just in case you decide to do it,” said the pharmacist. “Does the turkey have a name?”

I sat for a moment, trying to come up with a name but unable to ignore the absurdity of the larger picture. I had just started putting together the paperwork for my nonprofit corporation, so I had yet to take in any donations. Eight hundred dollars for one bird was not in the cards—especially a turkey who, if all went well, would be released in the middle of turkey hunting season. I tried to fend off an attack of existential angst by concentrating on coming up with a name.

Logically, of course, I didn't have to. But damn it, I was going to solve at least one part of this problem, and I was going to do it right then and there.
Unfortunately, my brain was not cooperating. “Lassie,” I thought. “Mr. Ed.” I contemplated some of the more florid names bestowed by sentimental rehabbers, and wondered if the pharmacist could fit “Most Precious and Beloved But Ultimately Unaffordable Gift from the Heavens Above” onto a little pill bottle sticker.

“Are you still there?” asked the pharmacist.

“Her name is Gravy,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“No—it's Drumstick,” I said, and immediately felt a pang of remorse. I returned to the less offensive Gravy, which a furious bout of free-association turned into Wavy Gravy. Perfect, I thought. Who better to understand the absurdity of my predicament—and life in general—than the man who said, “I am an activist clown and a frozen dessert”?

“Her name is Wavy Gravy,” I stated firmly. I was rewarded by silence.

After hanging up the phone I sat at the kitchen table, trying to figure out how I could come up with the $800. With the drugs she would live, without them she would die, and I was in too deep to call the whole thing off. I called around to see if I could find a cheaper drug source, and discovered that one of the reasons ciprofloxacin was so expensive was because it was being stockpiled by wealthy New Yorkers in case of a post–9/11 anthrax attack. It didn't take long for me to work myself up into a state of white-hot indignation.

“Hi,” said John, innocently entering the room.

“Damn these selfish yuppies!” I shouted in response. “Hoarding all the cipro when I have a turkey who really needs it! What are the odds of an actual anthrax attack, anyway?”

“Gotta go,” said John, heading back out the door.

“No, wait!” I called after him. “Come back! Listen, that turkey has a fungal infection and I need $800 to fix her.”

“What?” he said, looking at me as if I'd suddenly lapsed into an African click language. “Now I've really gotta go,” he said, and disappeared.

“And they say rehabbing is all fun and games,” I groused.