Wedged - Stuck - Learning Patience

Today it dawned a very frigid -5, but it was a bright clear day. I had a few hours, and Nina was at weight, so I decided to go hawking, and invited my friend Mike (The Plant Doctor ~ to distinguish him from all the other Mikes I know) to come along. He's glad he accepted the invite.

The hunt started off rather like most of the ones I've been on these last couple months . . . a tough slog through very deep snow. I visited the annex field down from the one that is heavily defended by that resident hawk. I did see another bird while we were out, but Nina didn't chase it. She did begin flying into the surrounding neighborhood, and I did see a squirrel running up a pole where there was a transformer. I decided I did NOT want her chasing that, so flashed her the lure, and got her to come back. We worked the cattail bed for awhile, but it is so thick and deeply covered by snow the bunnies which I know are there, for I could see the sign, could not be kicked out. I had moved out and into the lane of trees, and was almost thinking we'd have to call it quits, when I flushed a squirrel. Nina obliged us by chasing it.

The actual chase lasted about three attempts, and on the final one she caught the tree rat, however, while tumbling out of the top branches with her prize, she became wedged up in the branches. Her two feet held the squirrel fast on one side of a branch. It was not dead, and did not die for the entire time she was up there. Her body was on the other side of the branch, with her wings outspread. Mike took a picture, but his camera is not nearly so good as Rich's camera. But you can get the general idea from this picture above. Nina did not appear to be in distress. She just wanted to take control of the situation, but did not dare let go of her prize, so had no feet to fix her predicament. The squirrel hung the entire time, approximately 20 minutes, squealing sometimes, as it had two hawk feet buried into its face, yet she did not have a killing grasp on it. Mike and I stood below, and could not believe what we were watching. All we could do was wait. I knew eventually she would adjust in some way, and would break free. The tree was just too tall for me to even consider climbing it. If my friend Aaron was around, he'd have probably been up it an down before I could blink. But I'm just not practiced at tree climbing.

So we waited!

Eventually, she did decide she no longer liked her position, and as the struggles of the squirrel became less and less, she let one foot go, and used that to gain a corrected position, and then broke free, and kited down to the snow. I quickly jumped in and helped to strangle her prize. It didn't take much. The poor thing was quite a mess even by this time. It then got smushed into the snow. At the end of the day, it was a pretty pathetic looking addition to the game bag. I did weigh it, and it was just shy of 2 lbs. It was quite a sizeable squirrel. But pretty pathetic looking!

So that makes squirrel #4. The bunnies are just terribly hard to find. To add insult to injury, there is one that lives in our yard, and I see it almost nightly as I come home from work. It lives under the mews, and leaves bunny tracks all over the yard. It's just lucky it lives in the city, and I don't dare release the bird to catch it. For today though, there is plenty of fresh squirrel for Nina to eat over the next week.