Animal Rescue League answers South End bird-call!

The feel-good story of the day!

When I got home last night, there was a note taped to the building's door. Our neighbor around the corner wanted us to know that a red-tailed hawk was sitting on our back fire escape.

She and her husband were on their deck a couple days ago when they heard a loud noise and then noticed the hawk. She assumed he had flown into our building or was somehow injured and fell. (We didn't heard a thing.) After he hadn't moved from his spot for two days, she knew he needed to be saved.

I went upstairs and saw him from the roof. He was just sitting there, apparently alive, but somehow injured and unable to move.

I called the Animal Rescue League, but it just closed at six. I called the city's 24-hour constituent line. A nice man took my information and told me an animal control guy would come over. But he didn't.

At 10pm, I called back. A different person told me that the guy had come to our building, buzzed, didn't get an answer, didn't have a phone number to call, and left.

w/e. Obviously didn't happen. We were upset. Couldn't do anything. Slept.

Giving up on them, we called the Animal Rescue League this morning. A helper showed up within an hour. (ARL is coincidentally in the South End on Tremont Street, too.)

The hawk was on a fire escape that runs between our unit and the one next door, but there's no ladder to the street. The only way to get to our little buddy was down from our roof deck or through our back bedroom window. When we moved in six years ago, there was an air conditioner in that window and we've never taken it out since. Not that we haven't tried. It's screwed (and painted) into place.

As we tried to get the a/c unit out, we noticed the hawk was gone. Oh, no! He had apparently been spooked and flew (we'd like to think, "falling with style") to the ground.

The ARL guy went down and then chased the hawk through the alley (so he was alive!). Our next-door neighbor helped. He said the hawk often sat back there on the fire escape, eating his prey. He was obviously injured, so something had gone wrong; perhaps he came back to a spot he knew and loved when he got hurt.

The ARL guy (Brian) boxed him up. Turns out, "he's" a "she" (not the first time I've made that error ...).

Now she's on her way to Tufts Wildlife in Grafton!

Hooray!

Animal Rescue League photo: http://twitgoo.com/4jxau1
ARL on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/ARLBostonRescue