Speaking of red-tailed hawks, it's Story Time - a true story, that is.
Mrs. E and I were living in Utah and we were fostering a Congo African grey parrot named Kizzy. The bird did not belong to us; we were merely its caregiver.
On the very day we were to hand her over to her new owner, I was in the process of cleaning 3 bird cages. Our two parrot cages and Kizzy's cage were in the kitchen. I disassembled the cages one and a time and took the parts through the sliding screen door to the patio where I washed 'em down.
I had to be careful, because Kizzy was out of her cage - in fact, sitting on top looking at all the festivities, located about 8 feet from the screen door.
In the process of taking another part outside, I stumbled on something and fell. I took out the screen door during my fall, and at the bottom of the patio steps I looked up and saw Kizzy flying away.
"Oh shit," ain't the word - trust me.
I did everything imaginable - followed her perceived flight path to an adjoining neighborhood and began looking; posted signs; knocked on doors. No luck. Defeated, I returned home. Mrs. E got home from work and asked if I'd taken a sign over to a local pet store - no, I had not. She did so and returned home.
The next morning, a Sunday, we got a phone call. Somebody had seen the sign in the pet store and opined that Kizzy was up in a tree outside their apartment. We went zipping over there (about 300 feet from our house, as it turned out), and sure enough, there's Kizzy way up in some kind of evergreen.
Now I'm the resident bird guy. I seem to be able to relate to them better than Mrs E, and it was this way with Kizzy also. I called out to her and tried a few tricks, none of which worked -- especially the real dumbass stunt I tried, which was to spray her down with water so she'd be too soaked to fly (I actually read that somewhere).
That spooked her and she took off flying. Damn. Up and up -- until we saw a raptor, later identified as a red-tailed hawk, that had seen her and was targeting her.
A parrot is no match for a predator like a hawk. Yet she managed to evade him and eventually came back down to our area, still up in that same tree. Kizzy loved peanuts, so Mrs E went home to get a handful of peanuts in their shells. I showed them to her and that's what it took to get her down.
She flew down to me, whereupon I gave her a peanut, covered her up in my arms, and we went right home where she could eat and drink without being the target of a semi-determined red-tailed hawk.
Dodged a bullet on that one.
