Hidden Path

Imagine a kid in the world of animals, who one day found himself standing in a room, gazing into the spiritless eyes of a giant, dead owl. This is the story of the renaissance of that kid; I am him and the moment I am about to describe is when I began to live with purpose.
The phone call came in early that day. There was work to be done at the bird facility where I volunteered and studied. I was around five years old and I was learning to rescue and rehabilitate birds with wingspans longer than I was tall. On this Saturday morning we were to “post”, also known as autopsy, three birds of prey that had been brought into the facility, already dead.
It’s important to post a bird of prey because they are an “indicator species.” By this I mean a “pointer” species…a species that points out when something is going on in the environment. By learning the cause of their death, we can prevent eco-disasters from handing people the same deadly fate

6th period
English 8
Mrs. R.
I realize that dead
owls don’t talk
(but one sorta spoke to me once)

English Assignment:

Write about a defining moment in your life.

Let’s try to guess how many re-writes this assignment tooK me (or why science is more fun for me than writing is)

ya. Five. Not fun. 8th grade English killed me.

the bird endured.
On this particularly cool morning, I entered the back door of the building and walked straight into the examination room. I stepped onto a milk crate and took my place a the table, waiting for things to begin. The first bird we unwrapped was a Red-tailed Hawk, Buteo jamaicensis, which had been hit by a car as it flew after it’s prey. It suffered from head trauma and broken bones- a common fate of less-experienced hunters during their passage year. The second bird was a Harris’ Hawk Parabuteo unicinctus. They are called the wolves of the sky because of their behavioral adaptation to hunt in groups- a very intelligent species, indeed. We unwrapped him, revealing his dark, ruddy brown plumage. The white band on his longish tail was like a tattoo that lent him admission into his feathered gang. At first, his cause of death was a mystery. His entire body was seemingly undamaged until the scalpel exposed his internal organs. Then upon close examination, with the eyes of a kid used to scrounging M&M’s off the living room carpet, I noticed several nearly invisible sharp cactus spines barely protruding from many of the bird’s soft organs. We could only assume that he had flown into a cactus patch, probably while chasing a rabbit which was one of its favorite prey items.
The third bird lay under the bright lights on the examination table, wrapped in newspaper. I wondered what bird this was to be. The paper crinkled in the silent room as the irony of rolled up Sunday comics unveiling death struck me full-force. When the last wrinkled piece of newspaper paper was pulled away and had drifted to the ground beneath the metal table, I found myself face to face with a fully intact, beautiful feathered corpse. It was a Barred Owl, Strix varia. Having never seen this forest dweller before in my life, I was awed by its intricate beauty. Darkened bars of disruptive coloration danced across its smoke colored breast. I tipped the plastic milk crate upon which I was perched, closer to the table so that I could get a better look.
Its body was perfect, not a feather was out of place. Almost as though it had just preened itself. If not for the fact that it lay there so quietly, a passerby might have thought that we had trained it to lie still. When its silent wings were opened, they became a smooth, featureless landscape providing no indication or clues as to the cause of death. There was no blood. There were no emerging bones through the feathers. But when my falconer placed a hand behind its shoulders, its head fell back, limp. A broken neck was this one’s fate. A quick glance at the report on this bird revealed the sad tale that this noble creature had flown into the window of a new house being built on his block, in the middle of his forest.
As I stood there, looking into its spiritless eyes and feeling awful for the bird, I saw myself reflected back, a small person with exam lights burning in the background. It was odd to see myself in death. At first it kind of scared me. But here, a perfect bird was dead on the table for no reason, and there was no time for fear. I realized that this perspective of myself was a message of sorts. Yes, I knew he was dead, but something in there was beginning to stir me deep inside. .In that face of death I saw that I was alive in that bird’s eyes and the life was giving me, a five-year-old, a purpose. I guess I experienced kind of an awakening or what is called an epiphany. It was at this very moment that these terms I had heard about: overpopulation, urban sprawl and human impact became a very real problem to ME! I didn’t have the exact way to explain what I was thinking. But I took it personally. I could no longer care just about all things feathered or furry like I had before. Suddenly I realized that I must care about their habitats- where they live. Where they fly. Where they raise their young. It was at this moment that I felt like a torch had been passed to me. A torch that illuminated a path that, I think destiny had set aside for me, long ago. A path that would take me into classrooms. A path that would lead me to seek fresh knowledge and its meaning for human beings too. A path teeming with urgency and passion.

My name is Brooks, but because of this defining moment in time, I became a “Chance..” I have become conscious since that defining moment that I AM a chance for wildlife.

And if you know me, this explains a lot.
Wildly,
Chance

So then I followed this path