A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from a lady who wondered did we have any members of our wild life caring group living near her daughter, who lived a fair distance out of town. As it happened we had one, who only lived a couple of miles from her. It turned out that the daughter had seen an injured wedgetailed eagle and wanted to get help for it. She was sensible enough to realise that local help would be quicker than getting someone in town to come out. I gave the mother the number and said there’s another gentleman who lives nearby, but belongs to another group. I’m sure he’d help, if our lady is away, but of course I didn’t have his number to hand. The lady said that she’d call her daughter with the number and if they did no good she’d ring back for his number.
About half an hour later, the phone rang again, with another person reporting the injured eagle. I thanked them and explained that it had already been reported and someone would be assisting shortly. A few minutes later, the first lady rang back and said our lady wasn’t home, had I found the other fellow’s number. I had, and gave it to her, and settled back to hear what happened. By this time it was getting onto late afternoon.
I didn’t hear any more till the next day, when I was down the street. I met the daughter who had initially seen the bird. She said even though they searched everywhere around where the bird was last seen, they couldn’t find it. They were hoping that it had been merely concussed, had recovered and flown back to its mate. She felt however, with its injuries that wasn’t likely, and said when she got home she would continue searching. She had finally made contact with both carers, and they both said they would help her search.
At a meeting of our wildlife carers group held a few days ago, I finally found out what happened, when I spoke to one of the carers concerned. It took them two days to find it. It had walked through a hole in the fence and walked quite a distance and was trying its best to hide. When they found it, they caught it, and found it had a dislocated shoulder, and badly broken “forearm”. They rang the “eagle man” in Mudgee, who is the local expert, and they all agreed with great sadness, their only option was to put the bird down. It would have taken a lot of surgery to try to repair the injuries, and no guarantee it could fly again afterwards. Not a great option for a wild bird.
After this sombre discussion we thought we should get back on with the meeting and discussed the various things that we had to. Our secretary then told us about her invasion of flies. She decided to spray them which she duly did, but couldn’t work out why they refused to die. She decided they needed another dose of flyspray and gave them another dose. It didn’t kill them but made them very sluggish and they stopped annoying her. Later she couldn’t work out why everything in her kitchen seemed to have a film of oil over them. When it was time to prepare a meal, she went to get her spray on cooking oil and discovered it was almost empty. Then she realised she had picked up the cooking oil instead of the flyspray and sprayed the flies with oil! Of course we were just about to fall off our seats giggling so much. It was a nice way to end the meeting…
Home I went and decided I should practice my new Irish tin whistle. I’m not at all good at it yet, and make some very strange noises on it. The dogs often look at me strangely. This time, while practising my scales I hit a particularly bad note. Max woke up, sat straight up in his basket and looked straight at me. Then he put his head right down in the bed and “folded” his body over the top of it. I had been told!
Mamaroo's Diary 