Raptors in peril

Too much drama in the neighborhood today! When I went outside mid-day, I heard a number of firetrucks heading south, and then when I drove D. to tutoring*, he spotted a helicopter with a water bucket, further south near the Butte. I then saw a police car and a fire vehicle from Springfield, headed south on Fox Hollow, so when I got home, the first thing I did was check the online site of the TV station at our end of town. Sure enough, a house was burning down on the eastern slope of the Butte, in the woods.

Then I realized, with alarm, that the address they were giving in the paper was less than a quarter mile from the raptor center, and they were showing photos with a whole lot of smoke, and I could barely focus on anything else for the next hour or two, until their social media people** reassured me that the birds were fine. They’d had to prep everything for evacuation, but they hadn’t actually had to go, and the smoke hadn’t hurt the birds. How exhausting and stressful, though – imagine a handful of humans trying to evacuate more than 60 large wild birds.

* Today they played with dry ice!
** Yes, I’m Facebook friends with an owl named Dmitri.