A Hawk Tale

This is one of those stories that when you are telling it, you can already feel that no one believes you. At the time that I took this photo, I remember thinking that I'd better document this for My Honey. He seems to always miss out on a lot of what goes on at the ranch by working out of state. One day back in the spring, while minding my own business, I had a run in with a hawk. He or she (not sure, which) was not a full grown hawk. He/she was not a baby hawk. He/she was a teenager hawk, which would probably explain how we crossed paths. Our birds live in the guest room. We have a cockatiel and a parakeet. I'd been in the guest room to feed the birds and to raise the mini blind to let them enjoy the warm spring sunshine. A short time later I heard a loud noise which was followed by the sound of flapping wings. When I entered the guest room, our cockatiel had left her perch and was flying wildly around the room. Something spooked her and she continued to be very panicky. I wondered what had caused her odd behavior and why she continued to shriek so loudly. As I returned her to the perch, I glanced out the window and saw the reason that Eve was so upset. There was a "dead" hawk on the front steps. He (we'll assume that it was a boy hawk, lol) had swooped down and had flown into the window in an attempt to have our birds for his lunch. His lifeless body lay there on the steps. I assume that the impact broke his neck and was surprised that the window pane hadn't broken as well. I was on my way to the barn to do the morning chores and didn't want the cats to get ahold of him. So, I reached down to pick up the hawk and received a cut on my finger from the razor sharp talons. I put the hawk in an extra birdcage while thinking that maybe we should bury him in our cemetary with the rest of our animals that have since crossed over the rainbow bridge. When I came back from the barn, the "dead" hawk's eyes were now open and it's wings were spread out but yet it showed no signs of life. As I went on with my day of working outside, I tried to explain why a dead hawk's eyes would open or it's wings would spread out like that. About three hours after the impact with the window, the "dead" hawk came back to life. I was surprised to see him sitting in the cage looking around as if to ask "how in the heck did I end up in here?". I put water in the cage and watched and waited to see if he'd made a complete recovery. That afternoon I put on some big leather gloves, since I'd already seen the damage that his talons could cause on human skin, and I took the hawk out of the cage and held him up as high as I could reach. I spoke to him and told him that to remember me when he was soaring through the sky over our ranch. I told the hawk to live a long and happy life of freedom and with one upward movement of my arm (like in the movies), he was airborn and again soaring above the tree tops in the west pasture. I told him that not to bother going back to tell the story to the rest of the hawks, because no one would believe him. Knowning that I had photographed him, I still wondered how many people would believe my version of the events of that morning.