Well, it had to happen. I think I was feeling a little too sure of myself with the way things had been going. I suppose I wasn’t paying close enough attention.
Rebel had been bating fairly continuously on his perch since moving outside to the mews. I initially had the jumpbox a little too high and when he would bate, he would brush his right wing primaries against the wire roof of his weathering area. This was usually fixed after a bath and some warm soaks of the feathers and both Al and I thought his bating would slow down as he got more used to the mews. Well, needless to say it didn’t.
A few days earlier I had lowered the entire jumpbox with the aid of a friend and while that had solved the problem of the feather damage, it did nothing to stop Rebel from bating. In looking at his leash, I had long felt that it was too restrictive, but I didn’t want it any longer with him being so close to the roof. I figured that now I had lowered his perch, I could lengthen the leash and add a bungee shock absorber so that he wouldn’t hurt himself with the bating.
I made a very sweet parachord woven leash and tied a bungee shock absorber in it. I measured it out and hooked everything up. Rebel loved it. He was till bating a lot, but it wasn’t continual. He had a lot more room on the perch to walk the full length and turn around. He just seemed a lot more comfortable.
Problem one: instituting something new in the mews setup without setting aside the appropriate time to observe. That afternoon with Rebel in the mews, he seemed to do fine. Of course it was only an hour or so until dark so he wasn’t all that active.
The following morning, I had to work from before sunup to after sunset. I had a big event I had to go to right after work, and thank god Laura didn’t just pick me up from work. I had cropped Rebel up huge the night before so I knew he could make it through the night, but I also knew a couple of chicks before bed might be well received, so I raced home to get ready and feed my bird.
Disaster.
I pulled up in the dark to find my bird completely constricted by a tangled leash on the far corner of his perch. He had somehow bated and pulled the leather jesses underneath the perch rod which had been screwed down into the jumpbox. He had clearly been struggling for sometime. At least he was upright. I couldn’t see at all so Laura, who happened to come home right after me, ran inside to get me a flashlight. I cut rebel loose but he was still so tangled up he couldn’t move. I took him inside the garage and lowered the doors and cut the rest free.
Rebel had worn a 2cm abrasion on his left medial leg just above the feathers. Other than that everything looked okay, thank the good Lord. His tarsi were definitely swollen and he had reopened the first squirrel bite. I am sure I would have been upset to some degree with any injury to this bird obtained in the hunt, but to watch him hurt by something that was so clearly the result of my negligence was awful.
Al came over and we casted Rebel, which he absolutely hates. I put new jesses on him and covered him in scarlet oil. I kept him inside in the giant hood for a few days to keep him from stressing the legs in anyway.
The next morning I put large U braces on the perch so that there would be no way that a leash or jess could ever slide underneath it again. I covered the entire thing with epoxy and smoothed it out so nothing could hang up. Rebel went back out in the mews two days later and looked okay.
That really sucked.
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