One of the experiences I had during my high school clinical rotations was shadowing at a zoo. Out of the five days I shadowed there, two were spent at the birds-of-prey show theater, where injured or otherwise unreleasable birds-of-prey were trained to fly and perform in an educational show. Though I went in disappointed that I had to spend two whole days with birds—not my favorite; I'd rather be with the big, dangerous animals—I ended up falling completely in love with it. These birds were truly wild in a "wear a glove at all times when handling" kind of way, and the more I worked with the hawks, owls, eagles, falcons, and even vultures, the more I began to appreciate them. They were smart... really smart. And best of all, they were being trained, and I was being taught just how to do it.
After high school, I continued volunteering with the birds-of-prey show on my own simply because I loved it so much. And even though I ended up changing my major to English and considering abandoning my animal career path altogether (a story for another chapter), I maintained weekly volunteer hours at the zoo just the same. I will be forever indebted to the department manager, a talented keeper and bird trainer who taught me the ropes there, because everything I did with animals later on fed from what I learned there with him. I was only a volunteer, but I was a good one. The animals respected me and responded well to me, and because of that, the manager trusted me and gave me a lot of responsibility with the birds. There, I learned to tie a falconer's knot with my right hand while holding a hawk in my left; I learned how to read the birds and anticipate their behavior; I learned the basics of animal training with multiple trainers and the importance of consistency; I learned how to tell if bird poop is completely washed out of a grass mat or not. And I also re-learned an important lesson about respecting an animal's wildness. That lesson came the day I was attacked by an owl.
My husband-to-be had come with me that day to learn about why I loved volunteering at the zoo so much. He was observing as I completed the morning chores of weighing each bird, recording their weights in the log, and transferring them to their outdoor enclosures while the manager did his morning routine with another group of animals. One particular bird, a Barred Owl, was acting strangely that morning. I noticed, but didn't think too much of it. I presented my gloved hand to her and she stepped off the scale and onto my glove, so I wrapped the lead around my fingers for safety—as always—and walked her outside.
When we reached her enclosure, she started bating, a behavior where the bird attempts to leap off the glove and escape. I waited until she calmed down, then entered her enclosure and walked her to her perch. She stepped off onto the branch, so I unclipped the lead from her jesses and turned to exit. Just then my boyfriend called out, "She's going to jump you!"
"What?" I said, spinning back around toward the owl. She was sitting calmly on her perch. I watched her for a moment. "No, she's fine," I said.
"She had her wings up," my boyfriend answered. "It looked like she was going to jump at you."
I looked back at the owl. She was sitting perfectly still. "No, she's okay," I said. I turned around again and reached for the door.
Before I had the door open more than an inch, I felt something slam into the back of my head. I screamed and dropped to my knees. I felt a gust of wind as wings descended on my head, and then a pressure as talons gripped the side of my head, my neck, and my ear. Panic swelled in me and I fought to keep it down. I had always been great at remaining calm no matter what the animal did, but this was new for me. Her talons were compressing into my flesh. What in the world should I do?
It only lasted a moment, and then I felt hot pain and a thump as she ripped her talons free and used my skull as a springboard, forcing her body into the door. Her wings beat once, twice, swiping my head, and then she was gone.
I leaped to my feet and ran through the doorway into the open, pressing my hand to the side of my head. There was blood, so much blood. It was pouring from my ear and through my fingers, dripping down my wrist. But the bird—I had to find her; these birds were unreleasable to the wild. If she had escaped, we would have to call in the cavalry to find her. It would be a full-on "lost animal" code, and it would be the end of the manager trusting me, for sure. Thankfully, she hadn't gone far. A few seconds' searching located her up above us in a tree, staring at me with a glare of death. That was good. But then... what about me?
"Your ear!" my boyfriend called out. "Let me see!"
At first, I didn't want to move my hand. There was just too much blood, and I could think only of putting pressure on it. I had no idea how bad it was, or even if part of me had gone with the bird. But after a few seconds, the flow of blood slowed. I kept my hand pressed to the side of my head and we went inside to the sink so that we could clean it up and see how bad it was. After washing it with wet paper towels, I calmed down considerably. It was still bleeding a bit, but it was only a gash inside my ear and two other small cuts behind my ear and on the back of my neck. Barred Owls have a powerful raptorial grip that can reach hundreds of pounds of pressure per square inch. Her talons easily could have punctured my neck, but I had only scratches. The owl may have used me to escape, but if she had really meant to hurt me, she would have done far worse.
The manager returned as I was washing the blood off my face and hands. His eyes widened when he saw me. "What happened?" he asked.
I told him about the owl. He nodded once, but his body was tense. "Where is she?" he asked. "Did you find her?"
This is the life of an animal trainer, understanding that though people are very important, the animals are the job. Yes, he was concerned for me, but his most urgent question—now that I wasn't bleeding everywhere—wasn't whether I needed anything. It was "Where is the owl?" She was his responsibility, and she had been mine, too.
"She's in the tree," I said, sincerely hoping she was still there.
She was. And because of the amazing trainer the manager was, she quickly came back down to him. That's what a bond of trust will do.
I will never know why she attacked me that day, when so many other days she had been just fine. I don't think it was really to escape, because she never flew farther than the tree just above her enclosure. When any bird "escaped," this was the common thing. They rarely ever went far, because the zoo was their home and it was safe, and comfortable, and provided shelter and free food. But sometimes they would just feel like going to a tree, and they would sit there for a while. They always came back. In later years, when I had my own team of birds to train, I would experience this many times. That day, however, something strange happened. That owl was never the same with me, never responded well to me after that day, and I will never quite know why. We had a theory that it was because I wore white shoes, which she apparently had some kind of conditioned aversion to. But we'll never know for sure, because even changing my shoes didn't change her continued dislike of me from that day on. That is one of the mysteries of animal training; sometimes the animal's thought processes aren't entirely clear. Somehow, that makes the mutual respect and cooperation even more valuable when it happens.
I was sitting in the pew at church services later that weekend when someone whispered, "What happened to your ear? Are you okay?"
"Oh. Yes, I'm fine," I answered. "I was attacked by an owl."
I watched their eyes widen and their eyebrows rise. "You were attacked by a what?"
There was something thrilling about having an injury with a story like that behind it. Somehow it felt like I was a real animal person, because I had a story behind that scratch that not many have experienced. That scratch left a small permanent scar inside my ear, my first real trainer-scar. It wouldn't be the last. I have earned many more since then, though I have learned a lot and many of the scars I now bear were taken knowingly, as a willing sacrifice of the training process or in an effort to keep a scared animal safe. Most of my wounds were small and shallow. I'm out of the pro-trainer sphere now, and most of my scars have faded away to where no one but me really even knows they're there... except on the days I hold out my hand to one of my children or a student with wonder in my eyes and say, "Do you see this scar right here? This was from the time that..."
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