Second of two essays about the author’s volunteer work at the Raptor Refuge Center in Bellevue, Nebraska. The first: “‘Red in tooth and claw’.”
My tools are simple – work gloves, a long-handled, pivoting bucket and a miniature rake.
If the raptor’s mews is open to winter, I greet it out front so I’m recognized. Each mews has a two-door lock system, although many of the occupants can’t properly fly.
Once inside, I chatter their names and sing as I rake from pea gravel the scraps of mice, grouse and, from Ozzie the Osprey, fish.
My primary job is to excise dung. The bucket grows heavy with white pellets, fur and crumbled gravel.
I always know where every raptor is located. I’m eyed with concern by each. I move about within feet of their large talons.
Minerva, the female and larger of the two Great Horned Owls, batters me with her wing as I rake up their casts.
Dissecting owl casts used to be a mandatory high school science project. You could identify what had been on their menu.
I serve a community of the disabled – raptors unable to live in the wild.
I take care to manicure the pea gravel in each mews.
