2nd HONEYMOON?

We dropped our younger daughter off at the

church so they can catch the ferry to Juneau

for a week at camp. The youth pastor heard

both of our kids will be out of town for a week

and said A second honeymoon for you!

Umm, we didn't have a first honeymoon dude.

When we got married we had just purchased

a house and property and had flown my

mother in law in from Poland for the wedding.

We had enough money left to buy tickets to

state fair and we used some of our wedding

money to buy ourselves an oil painting at

the fair for our new house.

One day we will take time for a real vacation

to someplace warm and interesting and we'll

call that our honeymoon.

So after dropping our daughter off at church

we went down to have lunch at Kenny's. They

have the best lunchbowls! My favorite is the

Sweet & Sour Chicken bowl.

We left there and were walking along downtown

when we came across a raptor eating something

on the grass of the public area. I thought at first

it was an immature Bald Eagle because of the

feather coloring, but it is a Red Tailed Hawk.

Turns out this man is visiting from Valdez and

he is a falconer. The bird he had with him is

apparently hard to deal with so when he leaves

he has to take him along. He had a dog kennel

in the back of his truck that the bird stayed in,

but he had him out on the grass so he could eat.

He is a one year old Red Tail Hawk that he saved up

in Valdez. This bird had been knocked out of the nest

and was dying on the ground when he found him.

He named him Lucky.

He is devouring a quail that this man has flown in from

a quail reserve in WA state. He eats every bit of the bird,

even the feathers (for roughage) and the bones (calcium)

I asked why not feed him moose or deer meat and he

said it doesn't have enough calcium. Their diet in the

wild consists of mainly voles. We watched him eat

the head in one gulp. Wow, you learn something

everyday, don't you?

It was drizzling--see the rain drops accumulating on

the feathers? Kind cool the way it was beading up and

rolling off.

He had a little stand that he carries with him and just

puts the bird out on it with a tether. He didn't care

we were watching, he just ate the whole bird.

See how full his chest is from eating? Now he

is fine for the man to pick up without any arm

protection. He said when the bird is hungry he

has to wear arm protection because he is very

agitated and the talons really dig in and hurt.

This man was interesting to talk to--very

informed and turns out he is also a 4th

degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do at 59

years old.

I doubt anybody messes with

these two.

He's all--Back Off Lady, Sheesh.