Wednesday, January 3, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Tales from a
Sisters
Naturalist
by Jim Anderson
Use your
kindness
wisely!
Pam Nord of Sisters came
home and found a so-called,
“chicken hawk” caught in
her chicken pen fence. There
were no chicken feathers or
parts strewn about, so she
immediately focused on the
plight of her not-so-friendly
visitor.
The hawk was well
attached to the fence, in
such a manner that it looked
impossible for it to escape
without the assistance of
human help. Hawks are
killers, and in order to do
their killing efficiently they
use a pair of muscular legs
equipped with four long,
very flexible toes on each
leg, and on the end of the
eight toes there are needle-
sharp talons.
Those talons are capable
of closing in on each other
with such power and speed
they will crush the skull of a
jackrabbit and pierce into the
bodies of ground squirrels
in the blink of an eye. Even
death itself will not open
those talons and release that
grip upon the unfortunate
victim caught in the lethal
vise.
That is what dear Pam
didn’t realize or, in her con-
cern for the welfare of the
trapped hawk, completely
overlooked.
“I stopped my car and
went to the pen and saw it
was a red-tailed hawk,” Pam
wrote me. “I had leather
gloves on and a leather coat,
so I decided to untangle the
hawk from the fence and set
it free. As I worked to free
the hawk from the fence, I
started with its right leg and
then took its beak out of the
corner of the fence, and then
started on its left leg.
“When I loosened the left
leg from the fence, the hawk
used the talons of its left leg
to grab onto my left arm. It
was difficult to loosen the
feet because the curved nails
(talons) had gone in three
places, the worst being on
the top of my left forearm
and two places around the
bottom of my arm.
“I kept hold of the left leg
in my left hand and had the
right leg in my right hand
and lifted him up over the
fence and threw him as high
as I could, and he flew away.
He didn’t even say ‘thank
you.’ Ha-ha!”
How that dear woman
could say “Ha-ha!” after
being grabbed by four tal-
ons of a very unhappy hawk
is beyond me. I’ve been in
the same predicament on too
many occasions and know
exactly what goes on in
one’s body physiologically
when a raptor sinks its talons
into your flesh!
“My arm immediately
started to swell and bleed
in three different places. It
looked like I had three golf
balls under the skin. I drove
to the emergency room at St.
Charles Redmond, and they
saw me immediately.”
I’ll intrude again at this
point, because there’s a fac-
tor in this account that Pam’s
not sharing with you: the
searing pain! When a raptor
closes its talons, it releases
all the muscle action that
holds those feet open. The
force and the resulting
leverage that closes the feet
and the talons puncturing
flesh and bone is measured
in foot-pounds and that is
something the human body
can barely handle. In short,
Pam was really hurting!
“Everyone at the hospital
was intrigued because they
had never seen or heard any-
thing like it before. The sur-
geon came in and said they
would do surgery as soon as
possible and started IVs with
three different heavy-duty
antibacterial drugs, and said
I could lose my arm.”
And that’s no kidding!
The biological contaminants
that hawk shoved into Pam’s
arm muscles and circulatory
system are uncountable, and
unbelievably nasty.
“I ended up in a hospital
room about 7:30 in the eve-
ning. My arm started bleed-
ing heavily, the nurses had
to change all the bedding
two times during the night as
well as use new bandages.
“The surgeon came in
early Monday morning
and before I knew it I was
wheeled back into the sur-
gery for another operation.
He told me they cauterized
the edges of both incisions.
And he told me to stop using
Plavix because that drug was
what caused all the bleeding.
“My arm is healing well
currently. (I won’t lose it.)
The incisions itch but I think
that is a good sign. The top
stitches have been removed
and the stitches underneath
will dissolve.”
Pam is one very fortunate
woman to have the medi-
cal aid that prevented blood
poisoning and any number
of other medical problems
from that hawk’s damage
to her arm. The emergency
room personnel’s actions
quickly neutralized the enor-
mous diversity of ungodly
stuff that was on the hawks
talons as they penetrated her
tissues.
Now that you’ve heard
it first-hand from someone
whose kindness cannot be
denied, but whose lack of
11
PHOTO BY PAM NORD
A wild red-tailed hawk caught in a chicken yard fence. Don’t, for the life
of you, go near one!
experience in dealing with
that feathered stick of dyna-
mite backfired — may I sug-
gest that if you come upon
a situation similar to this,
PLEASE, PLEASE, no mat-
ter how much you care about
the trapped and “helpless”
raptor, leave it alone.
Sure, if you have some-
thing like an old blanket or
tarp to throw over it that will
cut off it’s vision of what’s
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around them, and you can do
it without handling the bird,
go ahead. Then call 541-
388-6363, the local Oregon
Department of Fish and
Wildlife (ODFW) office. If
it’s a weekend, call the non-
emergency dispatch number
541-693-6911. Tell them
who you are, where you
are, and what you’re look-
ing at. Qualified help will
arrive.
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