IT IS EXTREMELY HOT HERE. It was also extremely hot – and humid – in Charleston when I was there to see the eclipse, so other than a few family photos, the only pictures I took were of the eclipse. Then I came home and had to work in the wildlife hospitals every day for a week, in addition to my “real” job, so I wasn’t able to go for any hikes. Then when I finally had a day off, IT WAS 109 DEGREES OUTSIDE. So basically I haven’t taken any pictures in a while and I’ve run out of stuff to post, which means I’m going to have to post stupid pictures for a few days.
I was only able to stay in Charleston for a few days as I had a lot of other commitments. One big one was I had to be back in time for Sulphur Creek’s annual fundraiser, Flight to Freedom, which was held the Saturday before last. I am extremely fortunate and was assigned all of the absolute best jobs of the night: I had to handle a couple of our education birds, AND I got to do the release of one of the two rehab owls that is the highlight of the evening.
This year was Flight to Freedom’s 20th anniversary so we had a Roaring ’20s theme, which meant I got to dress like a flapper on top of everything else. I have a very nice beaded dress that is perfect, but I wasn’t looking forward to standing around in the shoes I would usually wear with it for five hours, especially while wrestling with raptors, so I went to the shoe store and found a pair of very cheap Crocs that resembled dress shoes to a decent degree. I AM SO CLASSY. I then stroll into naturalists’ office all decked out and ready to fundraise away and am immediately asked to get the turkey vulture out, which I wasn’t expecting to have to do because I wasn’t scheduled to handle him, but which of course I’m always more than happy to do. But then it turns out we didn’t have enough jesses for all the birds and we had to improvise. I ended up with something that would work, but which wasn’t as easy to put together as our normal jesses. I threw an apron on over my dress and headed over to Prince’s enclosure. Prince is a, well, he’s a real prince, he really is. He’s a very good bird, and he steps up onto the fist well, but his enclosure is designed for raptors, not for short girls in fancy dress and slippy shoes, so I’m sure I put on quite a show getting him on my fist (he was hard to reach). I think a few weeks ago I discussed handling Prince and commented that turkey vultures are HEAVY, so once I got him on fist, I had to then get the jesses on him, and they were much more difficult than usual, so the process took longer than usual, meaning Prince had time to throw up on me not once but twice!! This made me feel SUPER classy!! Turkey vultures throw up, it’s just what they do, so this was not unexpected by any means, but then as I said, I hadn’t actually expected to handle Prince that evening. I was smart to wear that apron, though, and also I was very glad I could just go back into the office and RINSE MY SHOE OFF IN THE SINK. In fact I kind of took a mini-bath in the sink, haha. Did I mention how classy I am??
Anyway, once Prince was all settled, it was soon time for me to get Elvis, the peregrine, out to greet attendees as they arrived. I look stupid in this picture, but here we are:
I have a headpiece that I would ordinarily wear when dressing as a flapper (which is something I try to do on a fairly regular basis…), but Elvis HATES unusual things on heads. Like, you can’t wear a hood around him or he freaks the heck out. (It’s real fun to feed him in the rainy season as he also hates ponchos, rain coats, and I don’t even want to THINK about getting him near an umbrella.) Elvis doesn’t even like you putting your hand near your face. So for Elvis’s sake I left the sparkly hair thingy off.
After greeting people and talking about how cool peregrines are for an hour or so, it was time to go in and get the two great horned owls we were releasing. Each attendee got a raffle ticket when they arrived and we drew two names, each of whom got to help release one of the owls by pulling the towel that was covering them off. I look like I’m frowning in this photo, but really I was entirely delighted – it’s just that my owl had its talons stuck in the towel and wasn’t letting go so I was trying to adjust him so he didn’t fly off with the towel. Deb says I’ll learn to consciously smile the whole time I’m doing public releases, haha.
After the releases, it was time for me to go get our barn owl, Savannah, and walk her around and tell everyone how great barn owls are, which I got to do for an hour. Taking raptors for walks is like my favorite thing ever. 🙂 I’m told there is a nice picture of me and Savannah, but I haven’t seen that one yet.
I sincerely hope everyone that attended our fundraiser had a good time – it certainly looked like they did! – but I doubt anyone had more fun than me!
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