The Birds of Prey Sanctuary, Coaldale AB



I recently toured the Birds of Prey Sanctuary on June 14th, 2012, with my husband Mark and daughter Stacy. These are some of the many photos I took that day. 
What a magnificent place! It is a safe haven for birds of prey to heal as well as an educational centre. People who find injured and orphaned birds of prey may bring them to the sanctuary, where they are cared for until they are well enough to be released. Although release back into the wild is the goal for all birds who come to the sanctuary, not all of them are able to overcome their injuries. Inevitably, some will pass, and others may remain at the sanctuary or be sent elsewhere to live out the rest of their lives.

As we wandered through this place of healing, I couldn’t help but feel and notice the healing energy radiating from these birds, touching the hearts and lives of all who visit and work there. Experience for yourself the awesome presence of these magnificent, magical creatures; you’ll be glad you did!



Burrowing Owl. This little guy is standing in front of the entrance to its burrow. A bit of pvc pipe helps keep the entrance open. I wonder what this owl sees when it’s in the cool darkness of the burrow, safe from the elements and predators? Owl eyes seem capable of penetrating the depths of our souls, glimpsing our true selves that lie buried beneath the shadowy layers of our memories.

    

Bald Eagle. A most sacred and mystical bird of prey. I get the sense that, should this bird set its sights on you, you will be forever transformed. In the blink of an eye, the eagle can knock over its prey, stunning or killing it with a force stronger than a bullet. It’s razor sharp beak and talons rip and tear into flesh with a precision unmatched by any manmade tool. In mere seconds, your transformation is complete; and you didn’t even feel a thing!

Golden Eagle. Another magnificent raptor! The piercing gaze of this creature is enough to send thrills and chills through one’s body. To lock eyes with this beauty, or any of the birds of prey in the sanctuary, is magical!

Great Horned Owl. This handsome guy is Gordon, the Sanctuary’s mascot. He has lived there since he was a baby. I think owls got their ‘wise’ reputation because of the penetrating and unmoving stare, evoking within us the feeling that who we truly are is being laid bare. What a gift it is! To know that we are safe in our vulnerability, and accepted, flaws and all, beheld in the knowing gaze of Owl.

Great Grey Owl. This impressive creature is also known as the Ghost of The Forest because it makes no sound when it takes wing after prey.















Turkey Vulture. This bird conjures images of imminent death or of decomposing remains in a desert. Visualize a flock of these birds circling high overhead. They have spotted a carcass laying motionless on the ground far below. Riding the air currents on massive wings, spiralling gracefully down and down, finally landing near the lifeless corpse, approaching warily and then standing upon it, sticking its nearly bald head deep into the stinking cavity, pulling out and consuming the delectables inside? As gruesome as that is, vultures serve a very important function in the circle of life - devouring the dead and decomposing bodies and transforming them into life-giving energy. How cool is that?!











Coaldale, Alberta is on the Trans Canada Highway, approximately 10 minutes east of Lethbridge.
Here is a link if you wish to learn more. http://www.burrowingowl.com/

Gail Fulkerson

This article also appears in the newletter Flight: A Living, Breathing Document of Consciousness. Trent Deerhorn, Editor

Snack Wrap, Anyone?

     Now, I'm no expert when it comes to serial killers, yet for some strange reason, they're all I can think of when I watch the new McDonald's chipotle chicken snack wrap commercial.
     The star, a milquetoast blond male, tall and lanky, wearing colourless clothing that matches his pallid skin tone, sits down at a table in the restaurant and takes the first bite out of the fast food chain's newest offering: a saucy and spicy chipotle chicken wrap sandwich. This guy looks and acts like he's on his first solo outing, and I fully expect to see him check over both shoulders for his Mom before he chows down. On second thought, he was probably shoulder checking all the way from his front door to the restaurant, praying that his Mom had not seen him leave and that she wasn't following him now.
     He takes the first bite, removes his glasses and tosses them away. This sandwich must be magical; his vision has returned to 20/20. Next, he flicks his stringy blond hair to fall across the other side of his greasy forehead and poke him in his other eye. He's such a rebel - the part in his hair now lies on the other side of his head.
     Geeky and harmless looking in his beige jacket and corduroy pants with the pleats in the front, and the too short trouser legs revealing all of his high-top runners, he now stands in a shoe store, checking out the new Keds running shoes the manager has put in full view atop a display case; two pairs of them, one pair the colour of desert sand and the other pair red, the colour of blood. He buys the blood-red pair, puts them on and walks out of the store with a bounce in his step, spicy snack wrap in hand and a devil-may-care smirk on his face. He doesn't notice that the blood-red shoes are leaving a trail of blood-red footprints on the sidewalk behind him.
     Farther along, a red neon sign in a storefront window catches his eye and he stops. He's standing in front of a tattoo parlour, mesmerized by the sign, unaware that the redness pulsating through the glass is exciting his brain to do unspeakable things. He'd have to look up the word 't a t t o o' in the homemade dictionary his Mom made for him when he got home; if he ever went back home ever again!...   That last part made him gasp when he realized what he was thinking.  He felt a sensation in the pit of his stomach he'd never felt before. He didn't know what it was or where it came from, but he didn't care, it felt good. He was delighted as the warm tingle grew stronger and spread throughout his body. He caught his own reflection in the tattoo shop's window and noticed a wide grin on his face. He was still holding the chipotle chicken snack wrap and the sauce was dripping into his jacket sleeve.
     "Mom's gonna be pissed when she sees the mess I've made on my jacket." His snack wrap filled hand flew up to his mouth when it registered that he'd spoken this thought out loud, but then he snickered, and then giggled - loudly - when he also realized he'd said a bad word: 'pissed'. Good thing Mom wasn't within earshot or he'd have a mouth full of liquid dish soap right now, his Mom's favourite swear word deterrent. She'd reach for the bottle of Sunlight she kept by the kitchen sink whenever she caught him swearing. It took forever to rinse it all out and hours for the awful taste to go away. It was the worst when she got it in his eyes whenever he squirmed in a vain attempt to avoid the inevitable.
     This new-found freedom was going to his head and making him giddy. He tilted his head and let go a laugh into the sky; the sound he made was eerie, and it creeped out a young mother who happened to be walking by pushing her baby in a stroller. The poor kid screamed and started crying. The young mother was horror-stricken and couldn't get past him fast enough. The sound escaping his throat didn't bear any resemblance to a hearty, full-bellied laugh we'd all expect to hear issuing from a man who's just heard the funniest joke of his life. No, it was more like the sound you'd imagine coming from an inmate locked away for far too long in solitary confinement at the far end of a dank hallway - high-pitched and maniacal, a screeching fingernails down the chalk board kind of sound that makes one's skin crawl.
     We catch up to our protagonist standing by a freshly poured section of sidewalk. Taking a bite of his magical sandwich, he bends down, puts his in the wet cement, stands up and walks away unnoticed, his last act of defiance caught on film. He's taken three nibbles of his snack wrap and there's more than half of it left. With each nibble of this hellish sandwich, his defiance and lack of respect for authority and social customs soars. It appears that he's gone 'ca-razee'.
     Why hasn't his Mom caught up with him? Whose blood did he step in and track out of the shoe store? And what of the woman and child who saw him in front of the tattoo parlour? Where are they now?
     The sound of wailing police sirens, ambulances, emergency response vehicles, and fire trucks waft on the evening currents. Milquetoast sits on a park bench, listening to it all. The took the last nibble of his snack wrap, licked the spicy sauce from his fingers and wiped his hands down the front of his pleated corduroy pants to get rid of the the rest of it. The heels of his blood red runners rested on the short grass in front of the bench. The soles were caked with bloody sand that he picked up when he stepped out of the pool of blood left by his sixth victim that day. He stepped over the lifeless body and crushed a sand castle a little kid had made and left behind on the sidewalk that ringed the playground. His blood red runners made a wet, squishing sound as he walked toward the park bench to rest up before he made the long walk home, where he hoped his Mom was waiting supper for him.
     "I hope she made my favourite dish, fish sticks and french fries. It's the best when she cooks the fries in oil, but not when she bakes them. If I find out she baked the fries in the oven on the same pan as the fish sticks, I'll be mad. Mad enough to kill her... Heeheeheeheeheeheehee!"
   
   

   
   
   
   
   

   

Why Is It So Frackin' Dark and Chilly In Here?

     I sat up in bed early this morning, before the sun came up, squinting to make out the time on the digital alarm clock on the dresser, but I couldn't see the silent red number display. I thought that our sleeping dog, Roxy, was blocking my view, but then I realized my line of vision was waaaaay above her sleeping form.
     The bedroom was completely dark. Thinking that maybe the clock had died quietly in my sleep during the night, I tried the lamp on the night stand, but there was no power going to it, either. I laid back down, snuggling more deeply under the warm bed covers to drift back to sleep, telling myself that when I awoke later on, the life giving power would once again be flowing unabated through all of its arteries and veins, but then, just before my eyes closed completely, I noticed light coming in under the bedroom door. My curiosity was piqued; if the hydro's off, why can I see light coming in under the door? There was no way I could go back to sleep until I found the answer, so I threw off the covers and went to investigate.

     I found a tea light burning in a saucer in the main bathroom, another one placed in a ceramic tea light holder sitting beside a propane lantern in the living room and two more tea lights burning in the kitchen. There was coffee in the carafe that felt warm to the touch, so I knew my husband had been able to use the coffee maker to brew himself some coffee before the power went out. The weather station on the kitchen table displayed the indoor and outdoor temperatures: 15 degrees Celsius and minus 21 degrees Celsius respectively. It was still quite dark but I could see the sky lightening outside. My ever resourceful husband, who had located and set up all the tea lights and his camping lantern, had already left for work, so I went back upstairs and crawled back into my now lukewarm bed. It wasn't long, perhaps 20 minutes, before I noticed that the covers I'd gotten back under weren't holding the snuggly warm heat as well as they had been earlier. I wondered how much longer it'd be before I had to get up to add another blanket, but I never got the chance to find out, because Roxy had decided she'd stayed long enough in bed and it was time to get up and go out for her morning pee.
   
     The bedroom floor felt a little cooler under my sock covered feet as I walked over to pick my sweater off its hook on the bedroom door and put it on. I shoved my chilled tootsies into even chillier shoes, opened the bedroom door and watched Roxy jump off the bed, shake herself back into order and then saunter off down the hallway on her way to the back door. Just as I was about to set my foot on the top step and follow Roxy down to the kitchen, I noticed the hydro had come back on; the black tv screen jumped back to life, all snowy at first, but then regular programming resumed. The sound of the furnace kicking in was both welcome and reassuring. The kitchen light was on. I opened the back door just enough to let Roxy step outside and I swear I heard her gasp when the coldness of the morning air took her breath away. Before she had cleared the door and I could close it, the beastly cold air, chilled to an insane minus 22 degrees Celsius, muscled its way inside and surrounded me. I felt its icy fingers reach into my pyjama collar and tickle the back of my neck, making me shiver involuntarily. I really dislike the cold!

     This isn't the first time we've had a power outage around here, but it is the first time this winter. When the thermometer dips into the minus 20's Celsius, a loss of power for any great length of time can be a scary, even deadly, event indeed. I am so grateful for the people who work so hard to keep the hydro flowing through the power grid and into our homes, where it gives life to our tv, computer, cordless phone, the lights, and provides the spark in the gas furnaces. I know you can think of other things to put on your list of must-haves that we'd all have to do without if there was no hydro-electric power, but     until the day comes when hydroelectric power is a dim memory, let's just face it: For now, we're all hydro whores and we make no apologies...

   

     
   
  

Stretching

I shared a quote on my facebook page the other day: "We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day." Edith Lovejoy Pierce
One of my friends posted this comment: "It was a dark and stormy banana would be a good opening line." I added a comment after his: "Bludgeoned sprinkles lay in pools of their own blood on the battlefield", in the hopes my friend would come back with the next line, but it didn't happen. Since that day, though, I've had these two sentences begging for room to grow into a wild and weird story, so here goes.


It was a dark and stormy banana. Bludgeoned sprinkles lay in pools of their own blood on the battlefield, the Moosomin Dairy King. People coming on the scene gasped in horror and covered their mouths with their shaking hands, hot tears stinging their eyes. How could this have happened in our town, in our Dairy King?! It was unthinkable that such extreme violence could be visited upon such a happy place like the Dairy King, a place where families went to buy joy, happiness, sweetness, and a few precious moments of peace and quiet while their children devoured their frozen treats, and before all hell broke loose when the sugar frenzy kicked in.


Dairy King employees and customers unfortunate enough to be at ground zero when the devastation hit, stood in mute horror, their eyes wide and staring, unaware of the sweet and fruity ice milk toppings dripping down their faces and staining their clothing, while chunks of strawberry and mashed banana mixed with pieces of chopped nuts slowly clotted in their hair. And everywhere were sprinkles; pink, white, green, yellow, and blue dashes of colour. Most bled out when they hit water or other wet surfaces. The ones that avoided any dampness and landed on a dry surface were not much luckier: In the ensuing panic, many more sprinkles were trampled to death, crushed to powder under the stampede of work boots and doc martins. 
No one person or surface in the place had escaped the sugary trajectories when the blast took out the sprinkle machine, spraying sprinkles in a circular pattern as the shock waves rippled outwards. Good thing, too, because the investigators were able to pinpoint the location of the explosive device when it detonated. All they had to do now was figure out 'who done it'. They got to work immediately when they arrived on scene; they called ambulances, took crime scene photos, interviewed witnesses, collected evidence for further analysis. There was a lot to go through: They would need the assistance of Detective Caffeine to help them get through it all. 


The next stop was Tim Horton's, the ancestral home of Detective Caffeine. Rich, dark, mysterious and exciting, Det. Caffeine has assisted law enforcement on every criminal case going back to the 1800's. The Detective's uncanny ability to speed up an investigator's thinking processes has helped law enforcement solve their cases in half the time.  


The investigators were rapidly discussing the case at the office when they saw two young boys ride by the window on bikes - bikes with dried ice milk and bits of banana and strawberry on the handlebars and caught in the spokes. The perpetrators had rolled by right under their noses. Those little Hooligans! 


The Hooligans had moved to Moosomin five years before, when Mr Hooligan retired from the military after 25 years of loyal service.  The two Hooligan boys, who so brazenly rode past the police station on their evidence-smeared bikes so soon after the Dairy King explosion, had been 5 year-olds starting kindergarten when they moved to town, and immediately began attracting attention for roughing up their classmates for lunch money, rice krispie squares and Dairy King coupons. By the time the boys hit 3rd grade, they were notorious. 


Mrs Hooligan was standing in the doorway when the investigators arrived at the house. She looked haggard. Being Mrs Hooligan will do that to a person. She smiled wanly at the agents as they approached the door and they smiled wanly back at her. There was no need for words; she knew why they were here and who they were looking for. In the past, Mrs Hooligan would have given any excuse to keep her boys from being arrested and going to lock up, but today was different. Unbeknownst to her boys, Mrs Hooligan had had enough.


The boys were sitting side by side on the couch playing their favourite nintendo or playstation or wii game, looking like freshly scrubbed little cherubs still steamy and warm from the bath. Their hair was damp and their tee shirts clung to their backs. They both looked up at their mother as she entered the living room, beatific smiles on their cherubic faces, waiting to hear the latest alibi their mother had cooked up to get them off the hook. Their smiles cracked and fell off, replaced with looks of wide-eyed shock and betrayal when they heard their mother tell the agents to cuff them and take them away. She had come to the end of her rope with the two of them, she said, and that perhaps a stint in jail would do them and the rest of the family some good. As the boys were being led across the porch and down the steps, a sprinkle came loose and fell from the patterned sole of one of the boys' runners. Their mother kindly pointed it out to the agents and suggested that perhaps they might want to bag it and use it for evidence. The agents drove away and Mrs Hooligan walked into the house, closed the door and went to bed.


At the trial, the boys looked haggard and worn from their ordeal. Being in lockup was scary and you couldn't turn your back on anyone in case they stole your rice krispie squares or came at you with a shiv in the dark place out of sight of the security cameras and guards,  demanding at knife point the contents of the care package you just got in the mail. On the other hand, Mrs Hooligan looked tanned and well-rested. A long vacation in the Caribbean will do that to a person. Mr Hooligan couldn't make it to the trial; he was working overtime to pay for Mrs Hooligan's Caribbean holiday and her upcoming elective surgeries. 


The boys were found guilty of destroying the Dairy King with an improvised explosive device and sentenced to be hanged the next day. Just kidding! They would remain incarcerated until they reached their 18th birthday. Mr Hooligan would meet his sons at the front gate on the day they were released from jail, but Mrs Hooligan would not. No one who knew her when she was the mother of these two Hooligans knew where she was and no one would be able to recognize her. 


All her elective surgeries were completed during the first four years of her sons' incarceration. By the time she entered the hospital for her last surgery, the one that so radically altered her appearance so that her own husband couldn't even recognize her, she and her cosmetic surgeon had been having an affair that started when she went to him for a tummy tuck,  elective procedure number two. It was with his assistance that she was able to walk out the front door of his clinic, disappear and start a new life. No one who knew Mrs Hooligan ever saw her again, and even if they did, they wouldn't know it.  


I wish I could say that everyone lived happily ever after, but I'd be lying.