Trapping 2

The Dump.

What more needs to be said?  I learned many things that day not the least of which is that my friend Rich is completely delusional.  The dump was a surprisingly pastoral setting with verdant fields that contrasted with the deep blue sky like it bounced out of a Monet.  That is until you note the methane pipes jutting up from the earth and you realize that you are standing on six or eight hundred feet of human refuse, all shoveled lovingly into a nice valley between two nice mountains, and covered with a nice field of winter wheat.  From the point of view of one of my many “jobs”, I have to say I was slightly envious of the effectiveness of that particular cosmetic job.

So.  Again we set the table and no one wanted to come to dinner.  Felt like I was that kid in junior high school who tried to entice friends to hang by buying the tickets to the Van Halen concert, the tour T shirt, and dinner at Mr. Gatti’s for everyone and still not having anyone to sit with at lunch.  Not that that was me or anything…  Pretty sure it was a .38 Special concert anyway…

So we had a gorgeous setting, artisan quality traps (if I do say so myself) laid out everywhere, bright sunny skies perfect for soaring, and who were our only visitors?   Turkey vultures.  Tried like hell to paint a red tail on them with my eyes, but no dice.  Rich had sworn up and down that when he worked at this site with animal control, there were Red Tails and Kestrels everywhere he looked.  After a few hours, I had to ask him point blank if he used to sniff glue on the job.  Now before you think I am just poking fun at Rich’s expense, you have to realize that most people have raised their eyebrows and started looking for the glue tube the moment they met the guy.  I just try to give him the benefit of the doubt.

By five o’clock nothing had come our way and Al’s veiled threats of baiting the traps with various parts of Rich’s anatomy were starting to seem like a good idea so we packed it in.  A very nice dinner with Kimmy followed and the wine she ordered turned the sinister plots to do away with Rich into the camaraderie with which we had started the day.  Visions of Red Tails soared in our dreams that night.

But not so much in our reality the next day...  The wine had done its job a bit too well because insanely, we found ourselves back at Monet’s Dump the next morning.  This time Dad and I were parked inside an old rusty army truck complete with army ants and soldier wasps.  Rich and Al took the blind as I am pretty sure they had taken some of my threats from the night before quite literally.  I guess people are less apt to think it a joke when you make murderous jokes with a steak knife waving around in your right hand.  So what if some of the jokes showed a keen insight into ways to hide a body?  A joke’s a joke, right?

Four pm and Rich is trying to come up with his own eulogy when a flash of white hits the “trap”.  I say “trap” because this contraption was more a mish mash of chicken wire than a carefully constructed artistic beauty like the others.  It was the Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tree of traps and would never have gotten into any respectable falconry circles.  Except for the fact that it was the only one of the traps that had caught a hawk.  Now I am a huge fan of the Peanuts, and I love the old block head for picking that scraggly little tree, but I can’t say that was rooting for that trap.  Damned if it wasn’t the only trap out there that I hadn’t made myself.

Anyway, we ran down there and there was a beautiful female passage Cooper’s Hawk in the trap, just what Rich had been wanting.  So, there I am, overjoyed for my friend who just hit the Bird of Prey jackpot for austringers, right?  Well kindof.  Let’s just say that I was no longer at all concerned with where to hide the body.

Well Rich survived the night only because neither Al nor I had the guts to try to man down a stark raving mad Cooper’s Hawk, and a good falconer has to put the birds first, right?  I mean I am pretty attached to my face.  I do not want a Coop’s attached to it as well…

FINALLY we decided to leave the dump to Mr. Monet and do a little road trapping the next morning.

To be continued.