By Chris Long
W
illie should be dead right now.
Actually, she probably should have died about
the same time Michael Jordan was playing baseball
in Alabama.
Willie is a red-tailed hawk, the most abundant hawk in
Missouri. Since 1993, she has lived with about a dozen other
birds (hawks, owls and turkey vultures) at Mizzou’s Raptor
Rehabilitation Project, a kind of assisted living facility for birds
of prey. Behind MU’s College of Veterinary Medicine are four
S
wooden cages, each large enough to hold a human. The wood
panels are half an inch apart. Even the owl that lost her sight
glares back when you peek in.
“These birds never really trust us; they won’t miss me
(when I leave),” says Kristin Moor, a project volunteer. “Maybe
(they will miss) the food.”
Before their injuries, these birds soared thousands of feet
above the ground and could dive at triple-digit speeds. They
had no names. Now, after injuries, their wings have healed
incorrectly, and they can’t fly more than 10 feet at a time. Birds’
bones are hollow (this allows them to fly), but if a bone was
broken again, the bone in the wing would shatter. Now, they
have names such as Camo, Eskimo Razoo or Willie. It beats the
alternative.
Most birds are brought in when they’re found on the side
of the road. Motorists don’t necessarily have to hit the bird; the
force of the wind created by moving vehicles can knock a bird
into the pavement. This probably happened to Willie, but the
records are 19 years old and unclear.
Moore says a woman called to report the injured hawk.
The operator told the woman to call back in an hour if it
didn’t fly away.
When the woman called back, she reported that Willie
had died. It was a lie. According to records, she kept Willie in
her basement and fed her raw hamburger for three months.
Hawks evolved to hunt in their natural habitat, which
doesn’t contain raw hamburger. Thus, their bodies haven’t
adapted to eating it.
No humans hand out food in the wild. Willie, like
other hawks, didn’t understand why someone was trying to
help her. In that situation, she, like many hawks, try to claw
its human captor and escape.
Eventually, a neighbor called the police. Willie was brought
to the project, and the woman was fined.
Records don’t indicate she was jailed, but it’s possible. In
Missouri, class A misdemeanors, such as keeping a hawk as a
pet, are punishable by $1,000 fine and or one year in jail.
The birds who are kept by the Raptor Rehabilitation
Project also benefit the community.
Willie won’t ever be released. Instead, the Raptor project
staff take her to schools and display her on a thick leather
elbow-length handler’s glove.
Taking birds such as Willie to schools is part of the project’s
education program. Willie puts up with visits because the
handlers have trained her to associate the glove with food — a
blend of proteins and vegetables. It doesn’t include hamburger.
Perhaps Willie and the other birds don’t trust their
handlers. Perhaps they long for the days when they would
catch their own food. Perhaps they miss flying.Yet there’s an
inescapable irony.
In the wild, most hawks don’t live longer than 15 months,
Moore says. So as much as Willie dislikes her cage, it has
kept her alive longer than
expected.
By Chris Long
tinkpot.Yellow mud. Red-eared slider. Ornate box.
River cooter.
Urban Dictionary defines these words differently
than any herpetologist worth a pound of turtle meat would
(which is about $24). But turtle experts, such as John Richards,
know the names of turtle species when they see them.
If an authentic Jurassic Park existed, turtles would walk
next to Brontoraptors, Megalosauruses,Velociraptors and the
film’s hero, Robert Muldoon. In fact, turtles roamed Pangea
thousands of years before those dinosaurs. Clever girls.
There are a lot of reasons turtles have survived for 200
million years. Females can lay up to 32 eggs at a time. They
eat pretty much anything, including rotting fish meat, algae
and larva. They’re good enough fishers (fisherturtles?) to turn
Ernest Hemingway’s Santiago green with envy. The life of an
individual turtle can typically range from 100 to 150 years.
For snapping turtles, their physical features and ability to
camouflage have aided their survival.
If you’re a fish, a snapping turtle’s tongue looks like a
worm. Once a fish gets drawn in — snap — the turtle chomps
down then chows down. Mother Nature has such an ironic
sense of humor.
Herpetologists study these ancient creatures and other
reptiles. Jeff Briggler, a herpetologist with the Department of
Conservation, says unprovoked turtle attacks are rare. A turtle’s
shell, not its bite, serves as the main defense against predators.
According to folklore, a turtle won’t let go of what it bites
until it hears a clap of thunder. There’s some truth to that. A
clap of thunder probably makes enough noise
to scare off a turtle that’s latched on to a finger.
Briggler advises that if you’re bit by a turtle,
place it on the ground in the body of water where
you found it. Likely the turtle will release you and
just swim away. And this tactic proves more effective than a
rain dance.
But if you believe the folklore, Jason St. Clair needed a
clap of thunder when he was fishing for largemouth bass at
the Finger Lakes near Columbia 13 years ago.
He was in the water next to an inflatable raft and had put
on scuba flippers to get around easier. A 25-pound snapping
turtle, about half the circumference of a garbage can lid,
mistook one of his flippers for a late lunch and latched on.
His fishing buddies watched and shared a chuckle at his
expense from a nearby fishing boat. St. Clair can now laugh
about the experience when his friends retell the stories, as
they inevitably will. At the time, he wasn’t nearly as jovial.
“I had to lean back to see what happened,” St. Clair says.
“It scared the hell out of me.”
He says he was uninjured but threw away the flipper, now
with a bite taken out of it, and sold the raft.
Briggler says he’s heard stories about turtles biting through
broom handles and fingers but doubts their authenticity.
However, that doesn’t mean a snapping turtle bite won’t hurt.
There’s a video on turtleman.com of a turtle easily
piercing a plastic water bottle. A bite will likely cause tissue
damage, Briggler says. Proceed with caution.
• Look down at the turtle in question. If its eyes can be
side, and it has sharp bumps on its tail, then put on a pot
looking at a common snapping turtle.
•
two rows of scales and round bumps on its tail, you
to kill this rare species. Take a picture, and put it on
Instagram instead.
• Hunters can kill common snapping turtles for the same
reasons hunters shoot deer. Some like the sport, some
like the meat, and some like both. Between July 1 and
ne.com
Are there really mountain lions in Missouri? Find out at VoxMagazi
10.31.13 • VOXMAGAZINE.COM 15