Today, the red-tailed hawk

No turaco today, but I did handle our red-tailed hawk Storm.

I feel like Storm and I have had a brief but colorful relationship thus far. I see him but a tiny fraction of time in comparison to his trainers, so I am a short blip on his weekly radar. It's been nearly two months since I last handled him thanks to my hand surgery. When I radioed my training supervisor to ask if I could take him on a walk about the Aviary today, a small bubble of trepidation rose in my stomach-- he wouldn't most likely remember me, and there was a good chance that I might have forgotten some of my training.

This isn't a dangerous scenario. It's just, the second time I took him out of his mew I got footed and I feel (correctly, I believe) that it was because of my inexperience and because of a handling mistake. Footing is when raptors try to grab at something with a foot. That sounds so mild, so I'll clarify. Raptors hunt with their feet--their powerful, taloned feet--and when they attack something, they don't often attack with their beak because they have these overpowering death tools on the ends of their legs. Beaks are for eating, feet are for doing damage. I had been warned enough about footing that when it happened I reacted the way I should have and I wasn't at risk of real harm having been trained to handle it. It also wasn't a bad footing. But it was a shock and proved to me how well-practiced I need to be in my abilities.

My deeply-buried concern was that I would be footed today, justifiably, for being a dunderhead and forgetting the training I'd been working on during the several weeks prior to my hand injury. Because Kambo the turaco was being worked in the Mill, though, and I really needed to continue training with Storm, Storm it was.

Before I went into Storm's mew I practiced fiddling with the equiptment and forgot how to connect the jesses to the Ballerina (this is what I call the ball-bearing swivel I use to connect the jess extenders to the jesses, to subtly remind me to hang the smaller side down when I'm putting it on). I fumbled stupidly for five minutes until Kristine helped me review how to put it on. Outside the door of Storm's enclosure, I showed him both of my empty hands through the grate. See? Empty. He hunched low, surveying me with perfect vision. He flew at the grate and clung there for a moment, not aggressively but as if to get a closer look. No food. He flew back to his perch.

When I went into his mew with the Ballerina, jess extender and leather leash, my heart was pounding surprisingly against my ribs. I didn't expect to be physically nervous. Some tiny prey part of my mind was terrified of this beautiful bird, suppressed by the need of my higher consciousness to be calm and in control, hidden beneath a veneer of partially feigned confidence that I had no doubt he could see through. That's alright, it was more meant to convince myself.

It's not accurate to say that I was afraid. Fear is ineffective so I try not to bother with it. I was a bit jittery, though. Approaching Storm on his perch, I extended my glove to just under his fluffy breast and he placed one, then two feet on my glove. His talons flexed into the leather. Jess extender through the hole that is slightly too small to be easy in the jesses, fingers mildly aching as I massaged leather through leather, then the Ballerina through the extender and the leash through the Ballerina. Equiptment on.

Unsurprisingly, my hand was very weak today and shook slightly from the strain of pinching the jesses between my thumb and hand, middle finger and ring finger. Still, after not having handled him in months, I had a hawk on my glove and he looked very nearly comfortable.