CRY OF THE SPARROWHAWK [part 2] (World famous old story)

by LOREN EISELEY
[part 2]

I switched on the torch and sure enough there was a great beating and feathers flying, but instead of my having the birds, they--or rather he--had me. I heard him give one short metallic cry when the light wwent on and my hand descended on the bird beside him; after that, he was busy digging his claws and beak into my thumb. In the struggle, I knocked the torch over on the shelf, and his mate got her sight back and whisked neatly through the hole in the roof. It all happened in 15 seconds.

You might think I would have fallen but no, I had a professional assassin's reputation to keep up, and the bird, of course, made the mistake of thinking the hand was the enemy and not the eyes behind it. He chewed my thumb up pretty effectively and lacerated my hand with his claws. But in the end I got him.

He was a sparrowhawk--a fine young male in the prime of life. The little fellow had saved his mate by diverting me, but he made no outcry now, resting hopelessly in my hand, peering towards me in the shadows behind the lamp with a fierce, almost indifferent glance. He neither gave nor expected mercy, and something out of the high air passed from him to me, stirring a faint embarrassment.

I put the hawk in a box too small to allow him to injure himself by struggling, and walked out to welcome the arriving trucks. In the morning that bird would be just and other episode. He would go back in the truck to a small cage in a city where he would spend the rest of his life. And a good thing, too. I sucked my aching thumb and spat out some blood.

In the morning, the mist was gone. The sky was a deep blue, and one could see for miles over the high outcroppings of stone. I was up early and brought the box in which the little hawk was imprisoned out on to the grass where I was building a cage. A wind as cool as a mountain spring ran over the grass. It was a fine day to be alive. I looked up and all around and at the hole in the cabin roof out of which the other little hawk had fled. There was no sign of her. "Probably far away by now." I thought. I decided I'd have a look at my last night's capture.

To be continue...
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