Raptors Revisited

Heard from Gigi (out doing research in Texas) that my entry on Erik the Falconer got Rob and Jackson’s attention. They had read the “My Side of the Mountain” books about the boy who went off to live in the woods on his own, and who had a peregrine falcon named Frightful. I never read the book(s), but I did see the movie when I was eleven and it left a lasting impression on me. In the movie version at least, the boy was a big fan of Thoreau’s, had a racoon named Gus, and brought a microscope in his backpack so he could do experiments while living for a year in a forest, in the hollow of an old tree. Gigi tells me that the author of those books had worried about publishing them, in fear that boys would get the idea in their head to run away and try to live in the woods like the boy in the book. The thought certainly occurred to me, back then.

I never had a falcon, but back when we were living in the Warm Springs district of Fremont our family had a hawk. It wasn’t so much that we adopted a hawk, but that the hawk adopted us. We had just moved out to California and were renting a house near the General Motors plant where my step dad Jim had gotten a job. In those days the whole area around the GM plant was agricultural, and the house itself was a bit isolated, surrounded by fields of tall grass. The hawk, which we later named Henry, landed on our backyard fence one day, and seemed to trust us well enough to let us get near and feed it a piece of raw meat. At some point Henry moved on, but you never really forget your first raptor. They mean business.