Months into my self-proclaimed “year of wonder,” I finally revisit the browser tab that’s been sitting open on my laptop. It’s the volunteer page for a raptor rescue and rehabilitation center, beckoning me to “help make a difference in the lives of birds of prey.”
Sure, I want to make a difference, but that’s not why I finally click the “submit” button. After a treacherous several years dominated by illness and its unwelcome companions, duty, isolation and grief, I’ve been clawing my way back to joy and wonder, one Why not now? moment at a time. Now the moment has come to indulge my fascination with killer birds—the allure of fluffy feathers mixed with a macabre appreciation for their flesh-ripping violence.
The drive to the Owl Moon Raptor Center in Montgomery County begins with a familiar tangle of Beltway interchanges, construction bottlenecks and traffic snarls as I leave my home in Falls Church and cross the Potomac into Maryland. A right turn off Germantown Road merges into a two-lane byway through rolling hills dotted with farmhouses and patches of woodland.
The sight of a bright yellow tractor crossing sign transports me back to the summer of 1981. I’m 12, and our whole family is in the car—a blue, wood-paneled station wagon—on one of my father’s Sunday drives to the country to scout out hunting sites for fall quail and dove season.
A true guajiro, my father had an earnest connection to nature that the direct English translation of that term (farmer or peasant) fails to capture. The youngest of eight children, he was raised among the sugarcane crops surrounding La Chucha, a rural village in Cuba. He spent his childhood exploring the fields, free to come and go much like the other wild creatures who shared his playground. Surely he would love to know what I’m doing on this sunny morning in September. “Hey Siri, call Dad,” I command absentmindedly. Then I remember as nostalgia sinks into grief. We buried him a year ago.
I arrive at the raptor center, the gravel crunching under my tires as I try to recall what the volunteer manual said about parking. I have zero wildlife rehabilitation experience, but I hope to work directly with raptors. Passing a barn and two smaller outbuildings on foot, I make my way to the back door of an unassuming house, my inner voice rattling off terms from the manual.
Mews. Mutes. Gut cup. Castes. Urates. Scrape. Wet mess.
My orientation starts with cleaning a mew—an enclosure where rescued birds can fly around in preparation for their release back into the wild. Each door inside the mew is marked with the names of recovering raptors. Two barred owls, Dayton and Drake, are perched high above my head, staring at me with an unsettling vigilance as I scoop up nastiness from the pebble floor and replace newspapers covered in wet messes. It’s intimidating, but mostly I’m starstruck. Downy and wide-eyed, barred owls can have a wingspan of up to 44 inches. They use their formidable talons to crush their prey.
Feeling accomplished, I head back to the house, where rescue director Suzanne Shoemaker and board member Malia Hale are chit-chatting with another volunteer as they prep medications for critical feathered patients. Hale turns to me and asks, “Can you handle gutting mice?” My stomach flips as my memory flashes to page 21 of the manual, a section titled Food Preparation Procedures:
Mice, rats, and quail are gutted. In addition to gutting, quail is plucked. Day old chicks do not need to be gutted or plucked.
“I guess I’m going to find out,” I respond, knowing this is not the time to be squeamish about the harsh reality of the food chain.
The sight of cutting boards and kitchen shears in the barn locks in my coping strategy. “This is a culinary task. Food prep 101,” I tell myself. My father prepared me for this day.
As a kid, I always hated that my father hunted animals. But I was a daddy’s girl and would do just about anything to spend time with him. He was happiest in autumn when he could go bird hunting with his pack of friends and two German shorthaired pointers, Yara and Hatuey. Though I never joined their expeditions, I was tasked with plucking the countless doves, quail and pheasants they brought home. I’d perform this ritual on the back patio of our house in West Springfield, plucking feathers while listening intently to my father’s stories of his outdoor adventures.
Now here I am once again, elbows deep in dirty work. I manage to avoid puking as two veteran volunteers teach me how to eviscerate the small rodents they’ve pulled from the freezer, weighed and portioned to thaw in cups.
Next up: pluck quail. I fall into a familiar rhythm, plucking feathers and telling stories. Time passes quickly as the others share the satisfaction they feel seeing birds they helped rehabilitate released back into nature.
I smile, remembering my own bird release in the spring of 1982. School was out, and I was eager to check on the two oddly cute guinea hens my father had brought home over the weekend. I raced past my mother in the kitchen, which smelled of garlic and cumin, and out to the back yard, peeking into the hutch that had previously housed pet rabbits, Marshmallow and Cocoa, and later doves we never bothered to name. My father kept the doves to train the dog.
I should have known our new pets, those funny-looking game birds, weren’t there for eggs. I heard the glass door slide open and my father’s voice: “Alicia, get a hen.”
It was clear I could only save one. I waited a few days to announce (with feigned surprise and alarm) that, somehow, the remaining hen had flown the coop and escaped. But my father was onto me. Sitting at the kitchen table, he held up a copy of the local paper.
“La guinea, the hen, they found it in the woods,” he said, laughing, as I nearly spit milk across the table. After dinner, I read the story myself: “Unusual Guinea Fowl Sighting Near Lake Accotink.”
Not all bird rescues have happy endings. A few weeks after my volunteer debut, I arrive at the raptor center to learn that a bald eagle named Cook has been euthanized. Eagles may be ruthless birds of prey, but living amid apex-predator humans is dangerous for them. I’m told a collision with a powerline or window is likely what caused Cook to fracture his coracoid, a shoulder bone that supports flight. The bone never healed properly. A flightless eagle will not survive in the wild.
On a crisp November morning, I’m selling raptor-themed jewelry at Owl Moon’s annual raptor festival. Wildlife enthusiasts from the DMV and beyond have come to Black Hill Regional Park in Boyds, Maryland, to see and learn about birds of prey up close.
The highlight of the day is witnessing the release of rehabilitated birds back into the wild. My shift ends just in time for me to join an expectant crowd as it follows Shoemaker to a clearing overlooking Little Seneca Lake. She explains that the beautiful creature on her arm was rescued after being struck by a vehicle and was successfully treated for brain and eye trauma. Then, she extends her arm above her head and releases the owl, Dayton.
I am still. Holding my breath, I watch Dayton’s wings unfurl as he flies majestically to perch on a high branch. The guajira in me exhales in joy and wonder.
Alice Lima-Whitney is a communications strategist, writer and literacy advocate who enjoys the wildlife outside her home in Falls Church. She is also a co-founder and former partner of Vintage Restaurants, whose eateries include Dogwood Tavern in Falls Church City and Rhodeside Grill, Ragtime, and William Jeffrey’s Tavern in Arlington. Find her online at limawhitney.com