When a hawk flies the coop in school’s assembly, students get lesson in problem solving
Moore Square Magnet Middle School has such soaring expectations for its students that a winged visitor this week caught that spirit — flying to the rafters of the school gym and refusing to come down for days.
School Principal Leslie Taylor said it happened Monday during a falconry program for sixth-graders, who have been reading the book “Flush” by Carl Hiassen. It’s the story of Noah, a Florida boy bent on discovering the nasty truth about a gambling boat his father sent to the bottom of a river because he said it was dumping raw sewage into the water.
Moore Square invited the falconer and his four birds to campus to introduce students to some of the majestic wildlife that could be harmed by such flagrant pollution. The bird man was scheduled to do two back-to-back performances for students, who had been divided into two groups.
The first show went according to plan, with all avian participants behaving as expected.
But during the second show, as the falconer was doing a demonstration with Henry, a large red-tailed hawk, Taylor said, “Best I understand, he said, ‘I’m going to let him fly, but he’s on a leash.’
“Then somehow the hawk got loose and flew straight up into the rafters,” followed by the curious eyeballs of 100 kids.
The pigeon arrives
With the program over, the students were sent back to class, and the falconer was left alone in the gym to corral the bird.
Sometime in the afternoon, he left to procure a pigeon as bait.
The pigeon, too, was on a leash, Taylor said, but then it also somehow flew the coop, joining the Houdini hawk among the rafters and the retracted basketball hoops.
They were pretty chill, Taylor said. “They just camped out on their respective beams.”
At the end of the school day, the falconer went home and admins locked the birds in their giant cage, making sure to put a note on the door for the night custodial crew: Don’t go into the gym.
The falconer came back Tuesday but left after the last bell without the birds.
Wednesday was the same.
No, a student can’t climb up to get it
Students, teachers and staff at the gifted-and-talented magnet school began offering suggestions: Can we shoot it with a water gun and get it to come down? Can we open the door and just let it fly out? Can we get one of the kids to shimmy up the pole on the basketball goal and get it?
“No,” Taylor said. “No, and no. Then we’d have a hawk, a pigeon and a kid stuck up there too.”
But Thursday, around lunchtime — maybe the smells from the cafeteria whetted the hawk’s appetite — the falconer was able to lure Henry from the heights.
“The main thing was that he got hungry and finally recognized that the gentleman had his dinner,” Taylor said.
Taylor wasn’t sure how, exactly, but the pigeon also was evacuated from the gym.
Moore Middle Magnet School often invites speakers to give presentations, Taylor said, because they add background and texture to what students read and hear about.
Also this week, she said, a botanist came to visit.
“And at the end of her demonstration,” Taylor said, “ she left with all of her plants.”
