Originally Posted by
FredFogg
Whew, I was starting to have withdrawl symptoms! I was too sick to go out one day and then the past 2 days Sally has had a bunch of squirrels make it to holes and each day had a hold of a squirrel but lost it on the way down and then it made it to a hole. So I got home from work today and she was too heavy at 51.5 oz so I had to wait untilt his afternoon. By then, she was down to 49.1 oz and I had the shakes, if I didn't see her catch something soon, I think I was going to have a break down.
We headed into the woods and after about 10 minutes Sally did one of those long slow glides that looks like a snake flight but I knew it wasn't because it was too cold for a snake to be out. I walked over to her and she was holding a big bunch of leaves in both feet with a stick. I thought to myself, silly bird, that isn't a snake, it is a stick. She finally let go with one foot and then I saw her reach down and pluck out of the leaves the vole she had squeezed to death. One gulp and it was gone and off we went.
We worked our way through the woods and I went to a leaning dead tree that had a squirrel nest right where the tree met another small tree. I shook the leaning tree and out popped a squirrel but instead of it dropping to the ground, it jumped over to another tree. Sally dropped out of a tree and tried to scrape it off the tree but missed and then it dropped out of the tree and I was waiting for it to take off running and for Sally to slam it but nothing happened. Well, it must be hiding in the limbs on the ground where it landed. I walked over and made sure Sally was looking our way and stepped on the limbs and my foot went down and there was huge hole that went back under a tree. I poked around in there with a stick but couldn't get it to come out.
We kept working our way through the woods and Sally flew over into a tree and was looking hard down into an area so I headed over that way. When I almost got there, Sally dropped out of the tree and smacked a squirrel off the side of a tree but didn't hang on. She pumped over through the woods into a tree while I was chasing the squirrel. She must have really whacked it because it wasn't moving too fast and I was keeping up with it. I could hear Sally's bells and I knew she was on the way, she passed me and right when she was about to grab it, it jumped on the side of a tree and ran around to the other side. Sally was on the ground and I ran over to the other side of the tree. The squirrel was too weak to go up the tree and ran down the tree and jumped on the ground and was off running through the woods again. Sally jumped up and we did the same thing on 2 more trees and finally it took off down through the woods and Sally flew it down on the ground. When I reached in to give it the big squeeze, Sally was really huffing and puffing. She really worked for her squirrel today and I finally had this soothing feeling over me. Ahhh, nothing like getting your falconry fix!
