I was coming back up Hines Drive this morning. Headed east. About 15 miles done, another 5 to go. It’s hot. 88° and climbing, feels like 98°. Humid. Wind is still, maybe a puff of tailwind going east.
Hines Drive is closed to cars on Saturday morning. A Dr. Seuss procession of every imaginable pedal-thing fills the parkway. There are riders with kiddie trailers, on recumbents, riding unicycles, pedaling tandems and pace-lining on inline skates. If it rolls, glides, skates, tows or walks on a leash it’s on Hines Drive on Saturday morning.
It’s like surfing a crowded beach. You go out there, paddle hard hoping to catch the perfect ride in. About twice a year you hit the turnaround point at Ann Arbor Trail and you catch it coming back toward Dearborn. The perfect ride.
It’s an ugly reality that most Americans can’t ride a bicycle well. It’s never more apparent than Saturday Morning on Hines Drive. Tonight, there will be a new litany of social media posts with emergency room visits and X-rays of broken collar bones. Americans know everything. As result, you can’t teach us anything. It is more apparent in U.S. cycling than almost anywhere in American culture. Do a group ride in Belgium, France, Italy- there is a hierarchy, organization, unwritten and unspoken rules for how to ride.
In the U.S. it’s mayhem. People ride four abreast. Because the entire road is open to cyclists (and every other means of ambulation), cyclists feel compelled to use as much of the road as possible. Riders push knee-busting cadences below 50 RPMs. Orthopedic surgeons should park a van at either end handing out business cards. People on $10,000 aerodynamic bikes in the wrong frame size sit bolt-upright over their unused aerobars wondering what saddle they should try next in pursuit of that elusive “best bike seat”. Triathletes do long training rides in tri shorts to “get used to them”. In short, it’s a mess.
But once or twice a year you catch that perfect ride. That perfect wheel.
Not sure who he is. Rides a Trek triathlon bike. Wearing a jersey from the Ford Athletic Swim and Triathlon (F.A.S.T.) club. His bike was clean and well assembled. Cable housings long enough, derailleur cables short enough. Rear wheel true. Tire relatively new. Saddle height and fore/aft looked good, aerobars fit him too, hand on the shifters and elbows on the elbow pads. He sat on the bike well. Pedaled well. No rocking. Knees straight up and down. Snappy Cadence, about 86 RPM. Good for a time trialist or triathlete.
I don’t know who he is, but he can ride. Really ride. Straight. Smooth. Good cadence. Pre-acts to other riders up the road before he passes, doesn’t shout “ON YOUR LEFT!” when he goes around them. Like I said, not sure who he is, but he can ride.
Got on his wheel. When you get on someone’s rear wheel to draft your front tire is only about 4-6 inches at most from their rear tire at over 20 MPH. Ride off to one side for “safety” and the first time they decelerate imperceptively and alter their line just a trifle- you go down. Your X-ray is on Facebook on Monday morning.
So, I lined up on his rear tire and used the back of his saddle as a reference. Focus. Hold. Relax.
He shifts when you are supposed to, and I can’t even see him do it. His body does not move when he shifts, only his right thumb and index finger. Smooth. When the resistance starts to increase with the gentle roll of the flat road he touches his shifter for one easier cog. Me too.
This is a luxury. The perfect wave. The perfect draft. The perfect wheel. The perfect rider.
He rides straight, smooth, predictably and holds a steady effort just a few percent above my fitness level. Given the smooth, comfortable draft swirling off his body just four inches in front of me I can go 2-3 MPH faster than I normally would be able to at the same effort.
So he tows me along. In utter perfection. I’ve caught the perfect wave.
It’s rare to see a U.S cyclist ride this well. Smooth, calm, confident, skilled. Even his clothes fit him correctly and he is wearing bib cycling shorts, not triathlon shorts, even though he is out on his tri bike.
This was likely my best wave of the year. My best free ride. I don’t know who he was, but he could ride.
Tom Demerly is old, fat and slow, but occasionally still rides.
Be careful with Stefano Sollima and Taylor Sheridan’s latest blockbuster, “Sicario: Day of the Soldato”.
It’s sinister, seductive relevance carries a sobering slap-in-the-face wake-up call or toxic political venom. It’s your choice. But either way you lean with the theme, the relevance and mastery of this knock-out sequel make it a rare case of a follow-on achieving everything its predecessor did, and maybe even more.
Chalk it up to timing and headlines, but “Sicario, Day of the Soldato” is laser-guided relevant with weighty themes of Mexican immigration and political subversion. The real-world significance cause the movie to do something few films do now: you actually care about the story.
“Sicario: Day of the Soldato” follows the original 2015 “Sicario” with much of the same cast. Gone are character Kate Mercer (Emily Blunt) and Icelandic composer and Oscar winner Jóhann Jóhannsson.
Director Stefano Sollima.
New to “Soldato” are Isabela Reyes (16-year old actress Isabela Moner) and the ominous, throbbing soundtrack strains of Hildur Guðnadóttir (say “GWON-A-doh-ter). Also from Iceland, Guðnadóttir was previously a classical cellist who is relatively new to bigtime soundtracks. This is her break-out moment. The two opening notes from her main theme to the movie are resonant and foreboding. It’s the “Jaws” theme for the Mexican border.
Character Isabela Reyes, a youthful character forced into the story, replaces the role of Kate Mercer from the previous film. In the original “Sicario”, Kate Mercer was symbolic of all of America struggling to understand the drug cartels, immigration issues and complex injustices surrounding the U.S./Mexico border. In “Soldato”, the juvenile Isabella Reyes performs a similar function but from a different perspective. She never had youthful innocence, is resigned to a violent life and is calloused and durable. While Kate Mercer represented the U.S. relationship to the border issues, Isabella Reyes serves as a character metaphor for all of Mexico trying to understand the border crisis, and also falling victim to it.
Young actress Isabela Moner’s masterful portrayal of character Isabela Reyes is the dramatic delivery tool to “Soldato”.
There is a complex lineage to the plot of “Sicario: Day of the Soldato”. The genetics of the story can be traced back directly to master story mechanic Tom Clancy. Clancy’s 2011 book Against All Enemies followed the path of Middle Eastern terrorism to central America and up to the United States across the Mexican border. That theme was also woven into the 2012 film “Act of Valor”. While this theme could have been structural to “Soldato”, it is, in reality, the only accessory to the main plot. The idea of terrorism entering the U.S. through illegal Mexican immigration is presented, and then seemingly abandoned in the film. If “Soldato” has a singular shortcoming, that is it. But this relevant footnote interlocks on the plot fairly smoothly.
An integral part of both “Sicario” and “Sicario: Day of the Soldato” are their remarkable thematic economy. There is no fluff. It’s all meat. As a result of this tight plot and orderly story you can never look away. Every scene matters, every detail engages. While the writing and organization of the theme facilitate this thematic economy, what delivers it is flawless visual production.
The visual experience of “Soldato” is beautifully textured with a subtle hint of well-done graphic novels. Composition of shots provides a true feel for the barren Sonora desert and the southern border region. It conveys something many people in the United States don’t get about the Mexican border issue: this is a different world from the rest of the United States. This writer lived near the Mexico-United States border for nearly three years, crossed the badlands between Arizona and Mexico numerous times and has stood across the wall from Juarez, Mexico. I’ve also lived in the Middle East and travel across North Africa. The border region has more in common with the Middle East and North Africa than it does with anywhere else in the U.S. As a result, most Americans have a tough time putting the border crisis into perspective. “Soldato” provides a visual insight that dramatizes the reality of the Mexico/U.S. border.
There is another brutally relevant gut-punch in “Soldato”. One that is as accurate as it is politically inflammatory. “Sicario: Day of the Soldato” acknowledges the weaponization of illegal immigrants. Whether they are Libyan and Syrian immigrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Malta or Greece, or Mexican immigrants trying to gain entry to the U.S., the exodus of distressed populations has been subversively used by nations to impose discord and hardship on neighboring countries. As the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico has degraded over the border debate, the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. has, by nearly all accounts, accelerated to a point where the question of what to do with the increasing number of people who cross into the U.S. has become deeply divisive. “Soldato” pulls no punches in editorializing that illegal immigration is being used as a tool by drug cartels and a corrupt government to destabilize the U.S. After the last two weeks of illegal immigration headlines in the U.S. and a couple hours in the theater with “Soldato” this light bulb goes on over your head pretty brightly.
Given all the relevance, economy, visual luxury and masterful execution of “Sicario: Day of the Soldato”, this film gets a spot on the very top shelf of the best dramatic thrillers as sharp as a paper cut from today’s headlines. “Soldato” is a rare sequel masterwork, durable and abundant with visual and thematic relevance.
Tom Demerly writes for TheAviationist.com and appears in Business Insider. His articles and editorials are read by millions around the world.
Film critics acknowledge just a few revered gems of action filmmaking as reference icons of the craft. The two Michael Mann films “Heat” and “Miami Vice” demonstrate the highest level of depicting moral dilemma, pragmatic reality and violent consequence set against an artful film canvas woven from the intricate threads of plot, cast, soundtrack, scene and nearly every other dramatic element.
“Heat” and “Miami Vice” are prefect films, without flaw and packed with subtlety that makes them viewable again and again. They engage the viewer in exactly the same way the eccentric Howard Hughes was drawn to obsessively watch and re-watch the remarkable 1968 John Sturgis film “Ice Station Zebra” based on the Alistair MacLean novel of the same name. As he descended into insanity, Hughes obsessively watched “Ice Station Zebra” several times per day for at least a year, hunting through the intricate film analyzing each scene and searching for new subtleties in the plot and dialogue. Such was the richness of this production, and the depth of Hughes’ dementia.
To an even greater degree, the 2015 masterwork “Sicario” (Spanish for “hitman’) by Director Dennis Villeneuve and writer Taylor Sheridan is not only a masterfully made film, but a remarkably relevant commentary and observation of the ongoing U.S. border and immigration dispute with Mexico. This combination of technical mastery and social relevance make “Sicario” an important movie.
“Sicario” is packed with plot details. The movie is remarkably lean, edited down to only the “meat” of the story. There are no accessories, no distractions. By contrast the recent 2018 film “Den of Thieves”, by director and writer Christian Gudegast, tried to achieve a similar level of mastery and subtlety. But “Den of Thieves” ultimately failed to reach the level of either one of Michael Mann’s films, “Heat” or “Miami Vice”. Gudegast’s “Den of Thieves” crumbled on overdeveloped characters and plot diversions that made the film feel clunky and forced. The visual and sound elements were all there in “Den of Thieves”, it just did not execute the lean subtlety of “Heat”, “Miami Vice” and especially “Sicario”.
While every scene in “Sicario” is structural to the overall film, one scene consistently grabs viewers by the throat and leaves film students and writers in awe. The Border Scene.
The border scene opens with a voiceover radio narrative from somewhere, an anonymous voice of authority on the radio that describes the situation at the border. The traffic jam at the U.S. border is an allegory to the delays prevalent in the U.S. immigration process.
The scene quickly cuts to character Kate Marcer (Emily Blunt) who appears observant, apprehensive and confused by the evolving situation. Her face shows puzzlement, reflective of the general mindset of most U.S. citizens when trying to understand the Mexican border situation.
Character Kate Marcer is all of America trying to understand the immigration issue. She is experiencing apathy and fear, but she is naïve of the actual reality of the border situation. Her character is hastily thrust into the environment of the border, forced to make sense of an impossible and violent situation.
Kate Marcer tries to preserve her integrity, but she is reluctantly pulled into a world with violent rules. She resists the second command to “Get out of the car” from character Alejandro Gillick (Benecio del Toro). She tries to slow down the action for a moment of reflection and analysis. It nearly costs her life.
There is no music in this short opening part of the scene, a chance for the audience to join in Kate’s experience of taking in the puzzling border environment and trying to understand it. The early lack of music in the scene also leaves it feeling sparse and tense.
Alejandro Gillick is hypervigilant. He maintains his situational awareness and calm mindset, becoming the first character to perceive a subtle threat emerging when he spots a carload of military age males who don’t belong in the setting. Alejandro does not reveal his observation initially, but tells Kate to “Take your service weapon out.” Uncomfortably, Kate complies with this first command and removes her pistol from her holster.
Then we are introduced to a key, but subtle character, Steve Forsing (Jeffrey Donovan). The character of Steve Forsing is based on a photo of an undercover U.S. Army SFO-D operative taken during the Gulf war. The character appears vanilla plain, generic and anonymous, almost to the point of being conspicuously anonymous. He begins the scene as an observer, transitions immediately and tensely to an active participant observing, “Gun. Gun left…”. The radio crackles to life giving the characters in the scene the disjointed and ambiguous rules for trying to moderate a deteriorating and threatening circumstance soon to spin out of control.
The rest of the scene is filled with subtlety and incredible tension quickly contrasted with horrific violence. Every nuance of the scene is finely crafted. Notice the dog barking in the beginning of the scene when the visual cuts to outside the vehicle as the soundtrack music booms into the forefront. The aural tendril of the barking dog continuing quietly in the back of the soundtrack below the musical narration maintains a subliminal tone of alarm and panic underlying the entire scene.
Alejandro pleads in Spanish, “En paz, en paz”. This quick Spanish dialogue to a non-Spanish speaking audience will be most effective. The situation becomes tense and difficult to understand as it accelerates. Director Dennis Villeneuve and writer Taylor Sheridan rely on the reality that most viewers cannot speak Spanish, and that Alejandro’s pleading caution to the cartel gunman adds to the building chaos of the scene. The subtitles read, “In peace, in peace”. It is a last, feeble attempt to interject reason and civility into a barbaric setting. The English dialogue appears in a subtitle to complete the subtle message that few real-life characters embroiled in the border conflict recognize a peaceful alternative to the prevalent violence in the region.
Every visual tool is used in Sicario to deliver the sense of tension and conflict.
Finally, the scene concludes with contrasting reactions from characters that include Josh Brolin as team leader Matt Graver. Graver’s reaction to the border shoot-out is pragmatic acceptance and detached calm. It contrasts with Kate Mercer’s terror and confusion.
“Sicario” is not just a great film, it’s an important one to view, contemplate and analyze in the ongoing discussion of the war on drugs and the Mexican border security conversation.
This Friday, June 29, 2018 the sequel to “Sicario” opens in U.S. theaters. While the original 2015 masterpiece will be hard to follow, writer Taylor Sheridan is back for “Sicario: Day of the Soldato”. With a new director, Stefano Sollima, it will be interesting to see if “Day of the Soldato” will be able to deliver with the same subtlety, technical mastery and relevance as the original “Sicario”.
They are among the most famous images in human history. The Robert Capa Life Magazine D-Day photos.
Blurry, poorly exposed and framed in terror, the images transcend photography and achieve a higher level of journalism: they are visual experience.
Robert Capa, whose real name was Endre Friedmann, was a Hungarian willing to go where no other war photographer would. He was the only news photographer on Omaha Beach with the early waves of the allied invasion force, hitting the beach with the second wave. Capa went on to shoot photos in five wars. His friends included Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck.
Photojournalist Robert Capa, the only photographer on the beach during the second wave of the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944.
Robert Capa cut a dashing figure with handsome features and a jaunty smirk on his face. He did, in fact of matter, laugh at danger. He seemed to revel in it. Capa was 30 years old when he landed at Omaha Beach and shot his photos. His mannerisms and exploits defined modern journalists like Dan Rather, Wolf Blitzer, Christiana Amanpour, Geraldo Rivera, Peter Arnett, Robert Pelton Young, Evan Wright, and John Simpson.
The enormity and perfection of Capa’s D-Day photos cannot be overstated. They are, in every way, perfect photographs. Robert Capa’s D-Day photos not only depict what it looked like to be in the first wave of the Normandy landings, they demonstrate how it felt to be there. Horrifying, Chaotic, disorganized, polarized, distinctly black and white and desperate. Had Capa’s photos turned out to be well composed, in focus and correctly exposed with the negatives arriving to the darkroom undamaged our perception of D-Day and, in fact, warfare overall, would be different today.
The black and white medium speaks to the absolute polarization of the conflict. The battle of Normandy was not just the allies against the axis, it was a clash of good against evil. No battle since has been so clearly delineated in the public conscience.
The blurriness of the photos accurately chronicles the chaos of D-Day. Troops landed in the wrong place. Landing craft were swamped. Soldiers drowned before firing a shot. Those who survived the landings were shredded by machine gun fire from fortified concrete bunkers. Artillery from naval ships rained onto the beach indiscriminately killing both friendly forces and the enemy. More so than even Dante’s Inferno, the Capa photos are the visual depiction of hell.
In point of fact, Robert Capa’s D-Day photos changed the world to a similar degree the invasion itself did.
Along with photos of the Apollo Moon Landings and the funeral of John F. Kennedy, the Capa D-Day photos are the most famous photos in history. As media evolved into the video and then internet age the relevance and impact of still photos waned. People were hard to shock with a single image. Our brains became trained to interpret visual information differently, cameras became more common and higher quality, the transmission of images became instantaneous and every person with a smartphone became a reporter. But even with this evolution and proliferation of media Capa’s D-Day photos still stab with a sense of horror and violence.
Capa shot the D-Day images using two Contax II cameras both fitted with 50mm lenses. He carried redundant equipment in case one camera malfunctioned or was destroyed in battle. Capa shot 35mm film negatives. He carried additional rolls of film with him, but changing the film without accidentally exposing it and keeping it dry was nearly impossible on D-Day.
Although Capa shot a total of 106 frames before, during and after the landing of the second invasion wave he accompanied, most were destroyed by a fifteen-year-old lab assistant named Dennis Banks working for Life magazine in London. Banks accidentally set a film negative dryer too high and melted three complete rolls of film. In a bizarre allegory, it is as though those lost images symbolize the soldiers lost on Omaha Beach that day. Even Capa’s ruined images remain significant.
Page layout from the original Life Magazine D-Day issue on June 19, 1944.
Only 11 total photos by Robert Capa of the D-Day invasion survived the darkroom error. Capa never mentioned the loss of the images. He took the matter completely in stride, the horrors and loss of battle having hardened him.
Life magazine published ten of the eleven photos on June 19, 1944. The feature was a splash-photo spread with short captions that were partly inaccurate. The captions didn’t matter. Capa’s photos told the story of the horror of D-Day most effectively without words. The images live on, almost more impactful now in retrospect than in the month following the D-Day landings.
On May 25, 1954 Robert Capa was killed when he stepped on a landmine while reporting on the French involvement in what went on to become the Vietnam War. Two journalists accompanying him, Jim Lucas and John Mecklin also from Life magazine, reported that Capa held his camera even as he was evacuated to a forward area field hospital, where he died from his wounds at the age of 41.
Author Tom Demerly is a U.S. correspondent for TheAviationist.com, the foremost military aviation blog in the world. He is a former U.S. Army Long Range Surveillance Team member and has visited all seven continents. He has written for TACAIRNET,Outside, Business Insider,Velo-News, Bicycle Guide, Bicycling, Inside Triathlon, Triathlete, Triathlon Today!, USA Triathlon Magazine and many other publications around the world.
Lofting along on rising waves of turbulent early summer heat boiling up from the fresh blacktop his variable geometry swept wings make minor trim adjustments to change his flight attitude.
At 130-feet of altitude and a leisurely 10 knots of airspeed he spots a target just east of the fire station south of the old tennis courts along Outer Drive at Dearborn High School. The Rouge River has flooded here driving targets north into the open fields and making for, what seems like, an easy kill. Easy that is, if it weren’t for these flying conditions in the strangely hot spring afternoon.
He banks hard right, pulling 3.5 G’s in a turn a fighter pilot would be envious of, especially this close to the ground.
His target is acquired, a scurrying field mouse driven up from the Rouge River basin by the heavy rains and rushing floodwaters from the past week.
He locks-on his target with eyesight that is nearly eight times better than yours and mine. He has eyes like a hawk, because he is a two-year old red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis).
The aerodynamics of a hawk compared to a U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.
He commits to the attack, wings quickly swept back, angle of attack tipping downward to nearly a 70-degree dive exactly like a fighter plane in a diving attack. In an instant his weight and efficient, aerodynamic body shape allow him to accelerate to over 60 MPH, almost straight down. Even though he is only two years old, his targets seldom escape. The local environment depends on him even if few people notice his daily aerial patrols.
Nearly every hunt over this suburban wilderness area near the intersection of Michigan Ave. and Outer Drive in Dearborn, Michigan is successful.
But not today.
He made a rare error, however slight, in his attack trajectory. His angle of attack relative to the scurrying target was just a bit too steep. His vision is optimized for locking on and tracking a distant target camouflaged against the colors of the ground. It’s not optimized to detect fence tops and power lines when in a terminal attack dive.
Speed, normally part of his arsenal, now becomes his enemy. As his target grows in his telephoto eyesight he suddenly detects a minor miscalculation in dive angle. But at over 70 MPH of airspeed, it is too late. Just as he drops the feathers at the trailing edge of his 3&1/2-foot wingspan to generate more lift and deploys his razor-sharp talons as airbrakes he hits the top of the 8-ft fence. Hard.
The impact is crushing. His right knee is torn, leg broken in three places. The collision with the high fence at the edge of the tennis courts causes him to flip tail over beak in uncontrolled, tumbling ballistic flight. The impact with the fence top stunned him, and he has momentarily lost situational awareness. Any pilot will tell you, losing lift and situational awareness this close to the ground with no room for recovery is usually fatal, especially at high speed.
Hitting the pavement stuns him. He’s not used to this. He is always the alpha, the hunter, firmly on top of this suburban food chain occupying the only rung above the silently stalking feral cats that hunt on the ground mostly at dawn and dusk. Even the cats know they are vulnerable to the hawk. There was the occasional fox in this area, but they haven’t been seen for five years now.
For a moment he is motionless, wings akimbo and sprawling, upside down on the hot, black asphalt. Hard wired instinct sends the alert that when he is on the ground he is vulnerable. Vulnerable to a cat or a fox or a dog or to the greatest threat in his environment, a human being.
He rights himself, but cannot fly. Shakes his head to clear it. Cannot get purchase on the air for more than a few meters at a time. He tries to fly, but his landing is uncontrolled on his shattered right leg. In only a split-second the buffeting ground turbulence, target fixation and collision with the fence top moved him from the top of the food chain to the bottom, now vulnerable to predation from anything on the ground.
Spectators at the soccer game at Dearborn High School on Tuesday night spotted the wounded juvenile red tail hawk alternately lying in the field and trying to fly and posted a photo on the Dearborn in The Raw community group on Facebook.
Mark Trzeciak, a local community baron, educated man and teacher, alerts me with a tag in the Facebook post. I grab my car keys. There is already a backpack in my beat-up old Ford Escape loaded with what I need to rescue a cat or an owl or a snapping turtle. But this is my first red-tailed hawk rescue.
I do a quick Google search: “How to rescue an injured hawk”. Then I am on my way.
I can’t find him. Searching the upper tennis courts, the entire lower field close to the Rouge River where Dearborn High School’s track is, I divide the area into a grid and carefully walk each section looking for him. I ask where he is on the Dearborn in The Raw page, but the replies in the thread are disorganized. One of the custodians at Dearborn High School notices that I am walking around with a backpack looking for something.
“Are you looking for the hawk?” asks Will Denton of Dearborn High School. Will has been keeping an eye on the hawk since he had his accident a few hours earlier. “He’s up here by the top tennis courts, just flew over there and landed. Doesn’t look like he can fly well.”
Mr. Denton directs me to an open gate behind the school and points out the juvenile red tail hawk sitting calmly in the grass, alert, looking around, but not moving.
I resolve to spend the night there with him but a friend messages me about Dr. Kevin Smyth of the Morrison Animal Hospital. Dr. Smyth is a veterinarian and specialist in birds and raptors including hawks and owls. I text him at about 9:30 PM. He replies quickly, “Call me”.
After I pick up the wounded hawk and drive him home my girlfriend and I make a nice temporary house for him on our back porch, safely sequestered from our three cats who are now very curious about our large, feathered overnight guest.
The hawk is majestic, even in his wounded condition. His body is massive and his wings huge and muscular. His talons are nearly the size of my hands, with inch and a half long hooks optimized for his high-speed diving attacks. But he is weak, seriously broken leg bleeding on his new, soft white sheet.
The next day we’re at Dr. Smyth’s office first thing. Transporting a large, wounded raptor is a bit tricky but we manage to keep the Mr. Hawk calm and comfortable.
At the veterinarian office Dr. Smyth handles the large hawk with confidence and the raptor responds with calmness, allowing the doctor to hold him and test his vision.
The news is not good.
It would appear the hawk’s vision is compromised in one eye, possibly from his crash. His right leg is broken severely in three places, including directly through the knee joint. The hawk is dehydrated and weak. Dr. Smyth gives him a mild anesthetic and administers I.V. fluids for the hawk’s dehydration. He is comfortable, but very weak.
We cannot know how a hawk thinks. Since we have begun observing and writing about them we’ve ascribed a nobility and power to hawks. Throughout the night, the hawk rests at the veterinary office. I want to say that he somehow knew we were all trying to help him. That he did feel a little better from the I.V.’s and the pain medication. He sat normally in a large cage on a soft blanket, maintaining his noble appearance throughout the night and into the next day.
But when the sun came up his spirit took flight, and his broken body remained grounded. Despite the best care of the doctor and the efforts of rescuers, he did not survive the morning. He died a peaceful, pain free, dignified death in the company of people who revered, cared for and respected him.
The loss of the Dearborn High School hawk is significant. He controlled the population of mice and other pests every day. He could have started a family of hawks that would have managed pest populations on each side of Michigan Ave. from Telegraph Road all the way east to Military, where the hawks from the Henry Ford Nature Preserve take over. He could have patrolled the two Kroger parking lots and the parking structures near the Village Plaza building.
But instead, he died from a collision with a fence we put there, in his environment. WE seldom give thought to the animals we share the city with. They occasionally show up in a Facebook post, or on a smartphone photo. For the most part people don’t pay attention. But their role is critical in maintaining the delicate and complex balance of nature in our neighborhoods. Losing the Dearborn High hawk is a significant loss in maintaining that balance.
If you want to help protect and care for local hawks, owls and other large birds in Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Garden City and the surrounding neighborhoods you can make a contribution directly to Dr. Kevin Smyth at 33607 Ford Road in Garden City. His phone number is (734) 425-6140. His website is morrisonvet.net. Dr. Smyth, a 1980 Dearborn High School graduate and Dearborn native, cares for wounded hawks and owls on his own. He did not charge anything for his extensive emergency care of the hawk we brought him. Contributions to his practice are used to pay for the expenses such as food, supplies and drugs used to rehabilitate hawks and owls and return them to their environment once they have recovered. Dr. Smyth’s contribution to our community is significant and worthy of support.
Author Tom Demerly has petted most things with legs, fins, feathers or scales.
tomdemerly 