African Grey Snatched by Hawk August 11, 2007
Posted by Andrew in : African Grey, News , trackbackAugust 09, 2007
Family’s pet parrot survives encounter with hawk
By ANNE GEGGIS
ORMOND BEACH — African grey parrot Bogart can talk, but he hasn’t yet said
a word about an incident most of his kind never live to contemplate.
What happened between the time a hawk ripped him from a screened-in porch
and when his human — the one he calls “Mom” — Elise Ewaniuk found him lying
under a tree in the thick woods probably went beyond words.
On Bogart’s seventh visit to the veterinarian in a row Wednesday, the
prognosis for survival was good — even if he might always carry the scars. His
veterinarian, Dr. Mark Andersen, isn’t sure whether Bogart’s neck will ever
straighten.
And Ewaniuk hasn’t quite recovered herself.
“Four days have been like four months,” she said.
It all started in the early afternoon Aug. 2 when Bogart was sitting on a
perch on the Ewaniuk family’s screened pool deck of their home in north Ormond
Beach. Then, Ewaniuk heard screaming — but she didn’t know it was her
beloved “little man.”
“It sounded like something scared, something being attacked,” Ewaniuk said
of what brought her from her home office to investigate. “I came walking out
because we have a bunch of baby (wild) turkeys back there.”
What she saw, though, was beyond her imagination — and something she still
sees when she closes her eyes: her pet in the talons of a hawk.
“He was just heading from the screen into the sky,” Ewaniuk said. “I
thought, ‘He’s gone. He’s got him.’ ”
The hawk, it appears, had been able to burst through a small tear about the
size of a softball in the screen and grabbed the bird known among the Ewaniuk
family’s friends for asking, “You talking to me?”
Ewaniuk said she ran back in the house for her shoes, ready to run into the
forest behind her house.
“I guess I was going in there to see if I could find him eating him,” she
said.
She ran 20 feet and saw her feathered child lying under a tree.
“I couldn’t believe it. I don’t even know what made me run in that
direction,” she said, explaining that she had seen the bird fly in the opposite
direction.
Bogart was rushed to Ravenwood Veterinary Clinic in Port Orange. There, he
received oxygen, antibiotics and painkillers. He spent a few nights in an
incubator.
“He certainly is lucky,” said veterinarian Andersen. “Most attacks like that
. . . I’ve seen birds with the wings torn off, their legs torn off.
“The bird (hawk) was probably startled by screaming and yelling,” Andersen
said.
He advised people not to leave their exotic birds on a porch or outside
unattended.
“If they see a bird in a cage, they will reach right into the cage,”
Andersen said.
For now, when Bogart’s not resting on her chest, Ewaniuk keeps the feathered
patient in a makeshift structure formed of blankets and pillows on the sofa.
She can’t wait until he’s back to his old tricks: chasing people out of the
kitchen while laughing, attacking her husband even as he mimics Bogart’s
voice and insisting that Ewaniuk take a shower.
Tuesday she knew he was back on the road to recovery when he took the first
sip of his favorite liquid treat: hot coffee with cream and sugar. Hope that
he would be back to his old self blossomed moments after Ewaniuk brought
Bogart home.
“I put him down and he said, “C’mere.”
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