Two weeks after we mourned the final passing of Houdini the great, another sighting has occurred! Two weeks of trying to flush this quail out of my garage and being outsmarted by a bird with a brain the size of a dried pea, I finally made my peace with the bird and let it roam free. Shortly thereafter, we found a pile of feathers near the front door and we said a tearful (my fingers were crossed) goodbye to the Great Houdini.
Flash forward today. Urgent text from my daughter as I am driving to work. “Houdini Lives!!!” She saw the bird on the way to school this morning… right outside the mews! He promptly flew to a tree when she walked by. She had watched him bob on past the front of the mews, just taunting Rebel to beat the band.
Well the good news for Houdini (wondering if he really is a quail or maybe a phoenix?) is that he will soon have company. I am building a recall pen for quail this weekend and buying another dozen or so of the monsters. The wife might divorce me, so if anyone needs help with the rent, keep the couch warm and give me a shout.
I figure that if Houdini can live unaided in my neighborhood all alone for several weeks, perhaps the neighborhood cats are too well fed to care about quail. My goal is to carry a bird with me when out hunting and when Rebel starts to soar, throw a bird out. I really want him to learn to hunt feathers from a soar. Planning to make a pigeon trap this weekend too. Keep that quiet though because that might cost me more than a divorce…
So Rebel weighed in at 40.5 ounces today and was ready to go. I barely got home with enough daylight to get him out to fly. If it weren’t for the fact that he had not been flown at all in the last two days since our imitation of the Polar Bear Club initiations, I probably would have just gone inside, poured a stiff one and taken him a rabbit leg for supper. Nope. Weary or no, my bird needed to fly and he was letting me know it. He started bating as soon as I pulled in and jumped right to the fist before I could even get his mews tethers off.
We headed over to Al’s house where I planned to take him down to the river in search of a giant fox squirrel, but it was getting dark too quickly. There was actually one of the demon spawn sitting at a feeder in Al’s yard as I walked through but I thought it would be poor form to take one of his pet squirrels… I regretted that decision immensely as we saw nothing else while out.
Well he got to stretch his wings a bit. He was following a little closely, but I am not surprised. His weight is lower than it has been and it is getting cold so he definitely has food on his mind, and I am not entirely sure that he is over the trauma from his arctic exposure two days ago. That or he was just watching closely to see if I would do something stupid like jump in Al’s lake… Regardless, he feasted on squirrel tonight and looks happy in his mews. We will try again tomorrow.
And Friday….. Quail! I hope…
No comments:
Post a Comment