書摘

 H is for Hawk  excerpt

剛看完這本書。  我借借還還這本書至少三四次。  從來沒看完過第二章。  這次又借了。  借了一個多月後，終於看完了。  我很喜歡裡面講馴鷹的地方。  這本書的主題真的很雜。  我想最重要的是如何度過喪親之痛，再來是馴鷹，最後是作者描述他親手馴鷹的過程裡，他對前人馴鷹的感想和印證。  

這邊摘錄的段落可以看出我最喜歡作者馴鷹的過程。  我掙扎了一段時間才看完這本書實在是因為他寫的喪親之痛實在很沉重。  

Chapter 12

...and as the cover falls my hawk makes a curious, bewitching movement.  She twitches her head to one side then turns it upside down and continues to regard me with the tip of her beak pointing at the ceiling.  I am astonished.  I've seen this head-turning before.  Baby falcons do it when they play.  But goshawk?  Really?  I pull a sheet of paper towards me, tear a long strip from one side, scrunch it into a ball, and offer it to the hawk in my fingers.  She grabs it with her beak.  It crunches.  She likes the sound.  She crunches it again and then lets it drop, turning her head upside down at it hits the floor.  I pick it up and offer it to her again.  She grabs it and bites it very gently over and over again: gnam, gnam, gnam.  She looks like a glove puppet, a Punch and Judy crocoldile.  her eyes are narrowed in bird-laughter.  I am laughing too.  I roll a magazine into a tube and peer at her through it as if it were a telescope.  She ducks her head to look at me through the hole.  She pushes her beak into it as far as it will go, biting the empty air inside.  Putting my mouth to my side of my paper telescope I boom into it: "Hello, Mabel."  She pulls her beak free.  All the feathers on her forehead are raised.  she shakes her tail rapidly from side to side and shivers with happiness.  

An obscure shame grips me.  I had a fixed idea of what a goshawk was, just as those Victorian falconers had, and it was not big enough to hold what goshawk are.  No one told had ever told me goshawks played.  It was not in the books.  I had not imagined it was possible.  I wondered if it was because no one had ever played with them.  The thought made me terribly sad....

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Chapter 24

...  I have spent my evenings playing with Mabel.  I've made her toys out of paper and tissue and car.  She turns her head upside down, puffs out her chin-feathers, squeaks, picks up the toys in her beak, drops them, and preens.  When I throw her balls of scrunched-up paper she catches them in her beak and tosses them back to me with a flick of her head.  Then she crouches, waiting for me to throw them to her again.  It is as good as it gets.  When I told Stuart I played catch with her for a while he didn't believe me....

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Chapter 30

..."An earthquake."  It was an earthquake...in England...And then I remember Mabel.  I've heard all the stories about animals fleeing from earthquakes.  "Oh, God.  She must be terrified.  I race downstairs, three steps a time, burst through the door and turn on the light in her room.  She is asleep.  She wakes, pulls her head from her mantle-feathers and looks at me with clear eyes.  She's surprised to see me.  She yawns, showing her pink mouth like a cat's and its arrowhead tongue with its black tip.  Her creamy underparts are draped right down over her feet. so only one lemony toe and one carbon-black talon are exposed.  Her other foot is drawn high up at her chest.  She felt the tremors.  And then she went back to sleep, entirely unmoved by the moving earth.  The quake brought no panic, and no fear, no sense of wrongness to her at all.  She's at home with the world.  She's here.  She ducks her head upside down, pleased to see me, shakes her feathers into a fluffy mop of contentment, and then, as I sit with her, she slowly closes her eyes, tucks her head back into her feathers, and sleeps.  She is not a duke, a cardinal, a hieroglyph or a mythological beast, but right now Mabel is more than a hawk.  She feels like a protecting spirit....