"Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again.

That's the way life is, with a new game every day,

and that's the way baseball is."

~Bob Feller

Pitcher for the Cleveland Indians for 18 years;

a prodigy who bypassed the minor leagues

Baseball Hall of Fame, 1962

(1918-2010)

Nokomis,  Daughter of the Moon   Howard Pearlstein

During a 16-week docent training class at the San Francisco Zoo years ago, I was outside taking a break -- and there was "Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon," a magnificent golden eagle, 5 feet from where I was standing. And then, still on her perch, she shifted position and stretched out her wings, a 6-foot-plus span. I was hopelessly in love.

I thought about the first man who said, "I will take a golden eagle and make it stand on my fist and hunt for me." That guy had to have an ego the size of Ethiopia.

I decided I had to find a way to handle that bird.

After class I went over and asked two women who worked there if I could learn to handle her, fly her. One of them asked me, "How tall are you?"

I said, "Six feet."

"Good." (Both were experienced raptor handlers, but both were under 5 foot 5.)

When tethered birds get shocked or scared by something they bate, meaning they try to fly off the fist and can end up hanging upside down, flapping their wings to right themselves. (A bird of Nokomis' size would be beating her wings against the ground, breaking her feathers.) Since Nokomis, like the other raptors there, was used for educational purposes, this sort of thing could happen when she came into contact with the public.

So hurrah for genetics. I was tall enough to hold her up until she calmed down and stopped flapping, and then I could put my hand on the back of her tail feathers and lift her back up on my arm.

When I finally got to feed her on the wing, I was just inside the Sloat Boulevard entrance to the zoo. Jane, my wife, was all the way over to the left, up the slight hill, 40 yards away. Jane cast her off and I was waving some rat meat, calling her name and slapping my gauntlet, and here was Nokomis coming in feet first (her foot was as large as my open hand, not counting the black talons, which were an additional 2 inches long), coming in around 25-30 mph, straight at me. I braced myself for the impact.

About 5 feet from my head, just a foot or so above my fist, she stopped in midair -- stilling -- wings out, and settled down on my arm. And now, 20-plus years later, I can still feel the gentle grasp of her feet on my arm.

Falconers and others who work with raptors often name their birds for mythical characters, minor deities and such. Many people find this a bit over the top. But standing there with this beautiful, powerful eagle on my fist, her eye maybe 6 inches away from mine, her talons able to grip with the power of a Siberian tiger's jaws, "Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon" made perfect sense.

Watching her coming in full tilt, feet pointed straight at me, and then stilling as she did, stopping in midair and coming down so gently, made me think of Rainer Maria Rilke's description of an angel in the first elegy of "Duino Elegies":

For beauty is nothing but

the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,

and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains

to destroy us.  

and we will share them with our readers. Write: usgsubmissions@gmail.com