Proof that Earl is out to get me, any way she can

I spent the morning at RAPTOR doing some Spring Cleaning...

In other words, scrubbing poop out of my carriers and weeding out the moldy pellets from my education box. I sat in the warm sunshine, up to my elbows in Simple Green with owl poop floating in it and I couldn't have been happier.

People who don't work with birds of prey get understandably a bit oogie when I talk about the large amounts of rat guts to be peeled off a perch, the headless mice tucked away in the corner of a cage that must be dug out (some birds like to stash), the glistening puddles of hawk poop that collect at the base of the walls that will only come free with wire brushes.
Oh, and the vulture puke. There's always that.


Long time readers of the blog know Earl, and they also know just what Earl thinks of me.
For the newbies:
Earl is an imprinted 26-year old female Turkey Vulture. Imprints can be either a blessing (they are more than happy to do whatever you want them to, because they are so into you) or they can be a nightmare for the poor dope who has to handle them. Depending on who you talk to, this is what is going on with Earl:
Earl hates blonds.
Earl hates red-heads.
Earl hates women of any hair color.
Earl loves all men.
Earl is incorrigible.
Earl is trainable.
(Any number of people at the center can refute or back up any of those sentiments)


I can only speak from my own experience. In the beginning, (four years now!) Earl and I were buddies. She came along nicely with no crankiness. A few nibbles on my fingers (love bites, if you will) but she behaved.
A little puke, maybe. But that is par for the course working with vultures.

Something happened, though. One day, I went in to get her, sweet-talking as I usually did and offered her my gloved hand. Something snapped in her little bird brain and she attacked me.
Things haven't gotten much better since then.

When Andi, a past volunteer and extremely cool young lady, asked if she could come around on a Saturday while she was in town, I was more than happy to hang with her.
She has done work with Peregrine and Aplomado Falcons, Common Black Hawks, and I forget what else.
Oh, yeah. California CONDORS.

So when it was time to put Earl back after a weathering period, she offered to grab a glove and do it.
Well, hell yeah. Keeps me from having to do it.
Other volunteers have been working with Earl doing some special positive reinforcement (Earl loves pinkie mice as a snack), but this was just insane to watch (and awesome, too).

Proof that this is all part of Earl's plan to psyche me out, shake my confidence and generally made me look like a boob:


1. Earl steps gently up to Andi's hand, like a little lady:

And Andi said at one point, "Earl, you're so little!" Of course Earl looks little. This woman handles CONDORS. Who weigh in at about 19 pounds or so, compared to Earl's dinky 4 1/2.



2. As Andi tries to untie the falconer's knot on the perch, Earl keeps her serene composure and acts like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth:





3. Earl stands like the perfect little princess she is as Andi wraps the tether around her hand. And it would NEVER occur to Earl to actually BITE someone, for goodness sake:




4. Andi glides across the uneven driveway like a ballerina with precious Earl spreading her wings in a heraldic pose as her graceful, willing and peaceful partner:



I mean, come on.

My name is Earl, and I am a Turkey Vulture.

Hello.
My name is Earl, and I am a Turkey Vulture.
I heard about this big event thing today on Facebook (yeah, I have an account. Who doesn't??).
Supposedly, this is International Vulture Awareness Day. Well. I say, it's about TIME.
People just don't understand how cool we are.

We are so cute when we are young....

This is me at a few months old. Have you seen a cuter baby than that??

I'm 24 years old now, and I'm still such a looker....

...but I sure do hate that red-headed woman. I hate all women, but I hate this one the most.

She just keeps trying to buy my love with toys stuffed with dead mice, and gives me puzzle boxes stuffed with dead mice, and phone books that I am allowed to shred all that I want and I don't get in trouble. She wants me to stand on her arm (pfft...as if) but I just puke on her and hang upside down. That's how I pout.

(Psst. I will let you in on a little secret, okay? Don't tell that red-headed woman, but I actually really like her gifts. But we can't let her know...it's more fun to watch her try and try...)

You people think that vultures are just stinky scavengers who puke on everything. Well, I am here to set you straight.



We vultures do the world a service with our scavenging. We eat all that dead, smelly, germ-laden stuff that no one else will touch. We clean up the world. If it weren't for vultures and other scavengers, your world would be a slimy, foul, unhealthy place.
SO THERE.
And since we eat stuff that would kill other animals if they tried to eat it, we have cool adaptations that allow us to process it. We have stomach acid strong enough to kill anthrax, and our poop is really a sanitizing agent that kills all kinds of bacteria. Since we really get into our food (honest, we get INTO our food....like we will step into a dead carcass to get to the really juicy bits) we get covered with all sorts of germy slime. So we poop on our legs and that makes us all clean. See? We are neat.

And that thing about puking?
Yeah, we do it. So what?
Everyone is so disgusted by that. Well, we do it when we are threatened, so you will go away. And if you notice, it works.

Our soaring skills are the best. We can soar for hours without flapping our wings once, if the thermals we ride are optimal.

And did I mention that we are beautiful? You stooopid humans think you know so much about beauty. We have awesome red heads, and in different light, our feathers can be chocolate brown or iridescent blue and black. Our beaks look like they were carved from pearls.

These people at RAPTOR, Inc. think they treat me so well.
They feed me every day. They clean my cage. The men hand me pinkie mice (my favorite), some of them sing to me.

But then they do stuff like this:

When the creek flooded all of the mews, they made me stay in this dog carrier for two days, because they said they wanted to keep me safe because I can't swim. Jeez. These people.

But I stick around. I know they love me and want me to be happy.

You know why they love me? And why you should, too?

Because I am awesome. I am gorgeous. I have personality.

WORSHIP ME. Because I am a Turkey Vulture.

Earl kills a paper bag!

This is perfect timing. I was hoping to thank Lynne for a delightful phone conversation yesterday, and I think she will appreciate/love this video.

This week, Cincinnati was host to the IAATE Annual Conference. My workshops included behavior modification and enrichment for captive birds. There were both "parrot" people and "raptor" people there..and one guy who thought up enrichment ideas for his chickens.

I left with so many wonderful ideas for our birds...here's one of them:

happy endings

A random wind blows through the blog tonight....

It's Autumn, that time of year we give pumpkins to captive animals:

I don't know if Earl is enjoying these or just staring at them all day. I will check back often.


A "pearly" beak for Lynne.

Fall, a time we bury our kids in bright red, freshly fallen leaves:

(That's Lorelei under all that)


*slurp*...."you taste like leaves and cookies, Little Human"

The sun is nearly gone by 5:30 pm:

This is what is called the "Mile Marker 14 Bird", a red-tailed hawk seen at the Ronald Reagan Highway exit off I-71. It always seems to be here, and this is the first photo I have ever been able to get of it...and I have been trying for 3 years. I was on the phone with Geoff while waiting at the light, and when I saw it, I yelled, "The Mile Marker bird! Call you back!"...and hung up on him. He understands.
Is this the same bird that everyone has been seeing for so many years? Maybe, maybe not. Choice hunting grounds like this are filled quickly when a resident hawk disappears. And highways are choice hunting grounds...if you take away the traffic. Lots of perches, wide open spaces (in between the cars going 70 mph). A good place to look for injured birds, too. I've gotten into the habit of glancing at medians since discovering RAPTOR. Most of the time, it's long-dead piles of feathers, but I check anyway.

A sign spotted the other day....


"Happy Endings Nailz"? WTF?
A nail salon that gives happy endings? I don't even want to know...

Because I'm tired of debating sparrows

Thanks to Lynne, Kathi, Donald and John for trying to ID that sparrow from the previous post. I still say that it wasn't a chipping sparrow. Chipping sparrows are about the size of a chickadee. This was BIGGER. I respect opinions from others who know more than me, but I have to stand by my own opinion. I still don't know what it is...but I know what I know.
It's enough to never ever ID a sparrow on this blog again.
More views of the damn thing:



I'll say this...looks like Lynne is picking up OODLES of good sparrow ID tips this weekend!


To put our focus somewhere else....a video of Earl, our Resident Turkey Vulture:

That sweet, sweet air!

I've been watching my two different batches of milkweed with baited breath. The common milkweed will bloom a few days from now, but the winner was the swamp milkweed IN THE MESSY, "UNATTRACTIVE", PROPERTY VALUE-DECREASING prairie. : )~


I think that if I had been given the choice, I would have picked milkweed blossoms for my wedding bouquet. I bent down to get a big whiff, and it was sweet-smelling like cotton candy ice cream.

Today was one of those marathon get-the-kids-to-where-they-need-to-go, then go-get-the-birds-and-do-a-program, then a reversal of everything to get back to where I started. Since we were down to one car, all the driving was left to me. Dropped off the kids, went to RAPTOR to get owls for a "Harry Potter" program at the Cincinnati Museum Center, then drove HELL BENT FOR LEATHER back to Loveland to get the girls by 3:30. And I had to somehow squeeze three bird carriers, a cart, my dead-stuff box and both of my children into a relatively small-sized Saturn. The girls barely had enough room to get enough breath to complain.
Oh, did I mention that the Saturn's AC is going out, too? So add all the above to 90 degrees today.

Looking at Lucy helps...

After two years, I still don't get tired of looking at that face. Aren't peregrines just beautiful? (And her cere, eyelids and feet are bright, sunny yellow....she's been gettin' vitamins.)

For Lynne. Sigh.

A little test....anyone see anything up with Earl's toes?


A baby robin at RAPTOR. A RAPTOR Robin.....hee hee.

In the midst of racing with the birds back to RAPTOR (sans kids....I dropped them off with Geoff), I called the dealership to check on my car. (They have had it since WEDNESDAY.)
My car was all finished. And the AC WORKS. It freakin' WORKS!!!!!!
Why is this such a big deal? Because it has taken three summers, one hotter than the last, for a mechanic to finally figure out why it didn't work. And we finally had the moo-lah to make it happen. Life does not suck.

(photo by Geoff Williams)
It's cold inside even when it's hot outside. Such a small thing to make a girl so sublimely happy. I will never, ever take air conditioning for granted. EVER.

Another little thing to make a girl happy: I have no programs tomorrow or Wednesday, and the girls will be at summer camp all day. Guess what Susan's gonna do????