'I started visiting and calling falconers in Maryland and Virginia, looking for a sponsor—and getting nowhere. All of them were white. And they all seemed surprised that a Black man wanted to be a falconer.'
I sat on the couch, lit a cigarette, and waited for T. to come in from the back room with my eightball of cocaine.
He measured out the powder and gestured for me to sample. I rubbed the powder along my gums with my pinkie until I felt the familiar tingle and numbness. “Oh, yeah, that’s good,” I said.“What was that?” I said, standing up. I was never a street dealer. My business was on a higher level—I only bought good dope from serious dealers and I only sold dope to serious dealers. I guess you could say I was midlevel. But my housing was keeping me from growing my business. I was living at my mom’s, at the Linda Pollin Memorial Housing projects. I needed more guns. But it would have been disrespectful to keep such an arsenal at her place. I also needed to be able to make deals on my own turf.
Birds of prey hadn’t lived in the area in decades; Bob and our ragtag band worked to bring bald eagles back to the city. We also worked with injured raptors, caring for them and teaching people about why places like the Anacostia are so critical to their survival. The following Monday, I returned to the banks of the Anacostia. This would be the start of a five-year journey teaching new Earth Conservation Corps members about the river and why they should care about the environment. It felt good to be back, taking on new projects, observing the eagles that were now reproducing on their own, and just soaking up the space that is nature. I had made my peace with the streets in prison—I was done hustling.
The sponsor is a critical element to falconry. Falcons in captivity have a much higher chance for survival than those in the wild; close to 75 percent of wild hawks and falcons die before they become adults, most hit by cars or trucks. Sponsors teach would-be falconers how to identify, trap, and care for immature birds, and eventually release them back into the wild to increase the population.
When the sport moved to Europe sometime around the Middle Ages, it became an activity for royalty, typically with falcons rather than hawks. Falcons primarily go after birds; their talons are made to snatch birds right out of the sky. And falcons have a small notch near the back of their beaks. When they capture a bird, they can fit its vertebrae neatly into that notch and break its neck. The bird is dead before the falcon even lands. The clean, noble killing appealed to the royals.
Stotts faced bias in his years-long quest to become a master falconer. Now he’s a sought-after presenter and public speaker. Trying to be as quiet as possible, I set up the trap with a dead rat about five yards away and then squatted behind some bushes to wait. I had taken my time making the trap after examining Suzanne’s, reading a manual, and watching videos online. But would it work? I didn’t know.“C’mon, now, easy does it,” I whispered. All of a sudden, in the time it took me to blink, the hawk dove and was immediately caught in my bal-chatri trap. My first bird.
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