Harrowing trip

Yesterday morning I sent my one year old male Rough-legged Hawk, KING, to his new forever home. He is now living at the 5th oldest zoo in the US, the Binghamton Zoo at Ross Park, in Binghamton, NY.

Unfortunately, because we're so small, we have to go somewhere to get somewhere. And his trip involved stops in SLC, then Detroit and finally Binghamton. All went well until the plane was heading for the last stop. It was scheduled to arrive in Binghamton at 11:09pm, Nancy was going to call me to let me know he made it okay. I got a call about 11:20 but not with good news.

When the plane was not quite half way to the final stop it developed some sort of problem so it turned back to Detroit. Poor KING had spent 10 hours in his crate being moved from here to there so I was concerned. Nancy called me about 20 minutes later saying that Delta was sending another plane out and it should arrived in Binghamton in a couple hours.

I got an email from her at 1:00 this morning telling me he made it and was doing just fine. This is the first time for a plane problem to happen when I've sent a bird out. As I have two more leaving IBR, one to KS and one to AK, I certainly hope it's the last.