USAF Gyrfalcon Recovering
Don’t do that again!
AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AP) — An Air Force falcon injured at West Point during a prank Saturday before the annual rivalry football game between the service academies is back home and showing signs of improvement.
The 22-year-old bird named Aurora “was able to fly around in her pen” on Sunday, said Air Force Academy spokesperson Lt. Col. Tracy A. Bunko.
Sam Dollar, Air Force’s falconry team adviser, told The New York Times on Sunday that two West Point cadets took the birds, threw sweaters over them and stuffed them into dog crates. Dollar said the cadets turned over the birds Saturday morning, with Aurora’s wings bloodied — likely from thrashing inside the crate.
“I think they had them for a couple hours and then they realized it was a bad mistake,” Dollar told the newspaper. “When Aurora started thrashing around in the crate, they decided that wasn’t a good thing.”
Aurora is the Air Force Academy’s official and oldest mascot. On the school’s falconry page, the bird is described as a white phase gyrfalcon, which is a “falcon species that is extremely rare in the wild and whose beauty will take your breath away.”
As this is a rare native bird, protected by federal law, unless you have a federal license for handling birds like this, your ass is absolute grass if you even touch one. This is a beautiful and rare bird, and like those rare birds that come to my feeding station, deserves more respect.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Gyrfalcon/overview
These two smart assed idiots need to have their punk asses hammered flat.
I have absolutely zero patience with people like this. I spent too much time working for a veterinarian, because I thought I wanted to be a vet, to tolerate this heinous crap. Whether it is animals of any kind, or children, or significant others, there is zero excuse for abuse of any kind.
My view of people who pull these pranks, thinking that they are harmless when they are not ever harmless, is that they should have to spend some time taking care of wounded or injured critters, whether they are Air Force avian mascots or wounded vets in a hospital with some body parts missing. A little time emptying bed pans and wiping someone else’s butt might teach them some humility and make them into ‘give a shits’ – or not.
An arrogant ass never makes a good leader, as we’ve seen in someone who used to post frequently on TAH, while looking down his nose at the rest of us. George Custer was one of those ‘look at me’ types. He graduated at the bottom of his academy class, and he met his match when he took on Sitting Bull, who was a better tactician.
I do not predict a good future for these two unless they learn to be somewhat humble. That’s the reason I posted the grackle glaring at the camera instead of the AP photo of the gyrfalcon.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves"
So, flip em the bird?
Curfew violations, things on that level, I can see some understanding. Something gone as badly wrong as this? Those two kaydets need to hit the bricks. There’s always ROTC or OCS if they want it badly enough.
Even if I apply the maximum benefit of the doubt, they have demonstrated that they are possessed of very, very shitty judgement.
And that’s with the benefit of the doubt.
Acceptable (sometimes even expected) of enlisted – but offrs??
Actually, even as I’ve said that, I’ve seen some pretty outrageous shit going on while I was stewarding at officer’s dinners XD
Actually, y’know, I’ve seen some pretty outrageous shit going on when I was stewarding officers dinners XD
The Falcon-Bring back George Sanders and Tom Conway.
Oh, yes, PLEASE! Or Bogey, and the Maltese Falcon – the stuff that dreams are made of.
Bogey & Bacall-Slate Shannon & Sailor Duval brings you Bold Venture in pre Castro Cuba.
“I do not predict a good future”. I predict NO Army future for these idiots. If they haven’t already been escorted off the Quad, they need to be. I’m wid you on animal abuse, I put it right up there with child or female abuse. Especially critters that are in a vulnerable position with no defense. Has the dumbassery gotten so deep into the American public that these types are what are allowed into the Point? Remember when only the top percentile were allowed into any of the Military Academies? Now it seems lately that the ranks are open to about any one breathing. Guess that is just more of the whole diversity in the workplace/education system thing. I feel that the closest these idiots need to be to any critter is mucking out the barn, while the horses/mules are away on detail. I liked the analogy to Custer. He was the poster child of how to be a pompous ass. Got what he deserved and took a whole lot of good troopers with him. A bucket list item of mine is to make it to Greasy Grass Battlefield and water his grave.
If you do that, you might want to notify the local tribe and ask if anyone wants to water the grass with you. 🙂
I’m as concerned as anyone else that social morons like these two are being sent to any of the academies when they seem to have no idea how stupid they were.
For what it’s worth/YMMV:
Wiki-Dicky says Custer was reinterred at the West Point Cemetery with full military honors on October 10, 1877.
Had heard/read that before Claw. Have also been told by Sioux Tribal members that the bones supposedly removed in 1877 by Libby were not Custer’s. Seems as if a few of the Native participants may have come back after the initial burial and moved some of the markers around, may have even been some hanky panky with the contractors/soldiers detailed for that task. Have read a number of histories on that fight, from both angles, US Army and 1st person accounts from the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors that were there. Big surprise, there are some inconsistencies from both. There is still the believed fact that his spirit is trapped on that hill, so I got that working for me. The owner of the surviving horse, Comanche, was CPT Miles Keough. Keough was serving under Maj Gen George Stoneman during the Battle of Sunshine Church, in Jones County GA, July 1864. Keough was captured along with Stoneman and several hundreds of the troopers. The officers were kept as POWs in Camp Oglethorpe in Macon Ga. The enlisted men were sent to Camp Sumter (Andersonville). Keough was probably of the opinion that Stoneman and Custer were equally highly qualified pompous asses. My distaste for Custer does not come from him being a Federal Cavalry Officer. My distaste comes from him being a Pompous Ass.
Roger all.
Sounds like the saga is one of those never ending deals that we will never hear Paul Harvey say “Now you know the rest of the story”.
And for years, Comanche was stuffed and on view at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
Never heard of an Air Force Academy mascot being taken by either the Army or Navy, but do know it has been a tradition for years between USMA and USNA to “kidnap” their opposing teams mascot before the Army-Navy game, i.e.the Navy kidnaps the Army Mule…the Army kidnaps the Navy’s goat.
Guess the tradition got out of hand since the Air Force Falcon was injured, but glad the bird is recovering.
“Chloroformed Goats and Stolen Mules: The Army-Navy Mascot Wars” (Tradition started @ 1953):
https://sports.vice.com/en_ca/article/qky4yd/chloroformed-goats-and-stolen-mules-the-army-navy-mascot-wars
Kidnap the mascot, you’re a hero. Injure the mascot, you planned and executed poorly, and you’re toast.
Speaking of the Air Force:
“General Officer and Five Others Reprimanded in Connection with 2017 Ambush that Left Four Dead”:
https://www.stripes.com/news/general-five-others-reprimanded-in-connection-with-2017-ambush-that-left-four-dead-1.555288
Interesting, spanks going up the ranks. Tho some may say a letter is not much punishment, am I to presume that these careers are toast? Appears as if the biggest blame may should have gone to the WO in the CPT slot? Another reason to bring them all home. Saddest thing I’ve seen over the weekend was the story out of Astan on the Utah NG getting murdered. Blue on blue?
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the AFA may want to get their heads together.
Cornell says the oldest recorded Gyrfalcon was born in 2000.
The AFA says their bird was born circa 1996.
Just an observation.
Thank you, Claw.
Just reporting the story as recorded on Military Times.
It seems Cornell hasn’t actually done much research, because the gryfalcon was described Systema Naturae by CArl Linnaeus in 1758, and was considered a royal bird during the midieval period. A subspecies, the Swarth’s gryfalcon, dates back some 125,000 years.
The only knuckleheads who should be punished are those whose task it was to provide birdcage security. The cadets do what cadets should do. I only wish they had thought to put two chickens in the falcons’ cages. Stupid bird did it to himself, herself, or xself.
Now there’s a thought.
That’s a picture of a crow.
I guess it could pass for a black falcon. Wait, is that racist?
No, it’s not a crow. It is a boat-tailed grackle, generally considered to be a pest because it dominates feeding grounds, but frequently mistaken for the crow. The difference is that the grackles have a yellow iris surrounding the pupil of the eye, and crows have a dark colored iris, usually dark brown and sometimes black. They look a lot alike, but grackles frequently have bronze or bluish tones in their feathers, while crows’ feathers are generally black, although they vary from species to species in the corvid family. It’s also slimmer than a crow.
Thank you. Very informative.
That’s the problem with an amateur ornithologist such as myself – I mistakenly lump them all into one category. 😉
I’m still trying to figure out the difference between a raven and a crow.
It’s only racist if it’s Jim Crow
Birds are very fragile, but they lived and seem to have recovered. . It was a foolish prank, but I hope nothing from this harms the pranksters careers.
West Point should stick to kidnapping the Navy tortoise. It’s much more durable.
Kicked out for “conduct unbecoming”, and other USMA infractions.
I’m having trouble getting too upset about this. Kidnapping mascots seems to be a standard thing. I have to agree with those who say the worst malfeasance here was by the people guarding the falcon.
Full disclosure – While a 2nd Lt., I bit the head off a small chicken in a Burger King. The skipper told me never to do that again, and threatened me with a psych eval if I did. End of story.