James Michael Harris, D.V.M. persuaded the folk at U.C. Berkeley Extension to let us offer a six-week night course in avian anatomy & physiology at International Bird Rescue. This was when we were in the warehouse on Eighth Street in Berkeley adjacent to the East Bay Humane Society. I would co-teach with him but would not be mentioned in the course description as all i had was an A.B. in biology and a teaching credential for secondary schools.
We devised a syllabus and otherwise prepared to teach the course. When the day came, we set up chairs in the area on the ground floor used by the S.P.C.A. for dog training, and greeted the folk who had signed up and paid for the course.
All went fairly well with Dr. Harris and i teaching most of the sessions but we also brought in a couple of others to share the load – one being a brilliant polymath, Malcolm Raff.
I had hoped that we would give each student an anatomically accurate plastic model called “The Visible Pigeon” made by the Renwal Company. The model had all of the main organs and could be taken apart and reassembled at will. However, i could not find a supply of them. I reached the company by phone and learned they had discontinued the model and knew of no one who still had a supply of them. So instead, we defrosted a number of our ‘failures’, bought a few more scalpels, and had the class dissect real birds. I think we lost several students who were grossed out by that session.
During the last session of that multi-week course, Dr. Harris decided we needed to demonstrate euthanizing wild birds that had no chance of release. I sadly chose a Pintail duck hen (Anas acuta) who had lost a wing somehow. Previously, we tried to persuade Paul Covell at the Lake Merritt Rotary Nature Center to let us put the hen in the lake but that ran against their policy.
I had never wrung the neck of a duck before and Dr. Harris could not be present for the last session, so before leaving, he pantomimed the process with the hen without actually hurting her.
The class went well, as i recall, until the time i explained why sometimes it is necessary to euthanize a wild bird. I took the Pintail from her pet carrier and with a few hushed cries from students, wrung her neck. It was a ghastly moment to brutally take the life from such a beautiful bird and i’m certain the students felt as i did. I put the lifeless Pintail on the table and finished up the remainder of the last session.
Afterward, i cleaned up the classroom area, put away the supplies we used, and carried the dead Pintail up to toss it in the freezer where we kept dead birds. I was tired and when i realized i had to write up notes on the bird and label it before it could be put into the freezer, i opted instead to just toss it into the refrigerator that held antibiotics and food. I’d write up the notes in the morning.
Morning came. I lived in the warehouse since the little money Alice & i paid ourselves could not begin to pay for rental in the Bay Area. I fixed a quick breakfast and took care of several morning chores – feeding and charting our patients – before i went to the refrigerator. I pulled open the door to face the hen facing me. She softly quacked and walked forward to the edge of the shelf she was on. I was horrified. I was delighted. I was struck with guilt that i had tried to kill her. All i could say was, “Oh my god.” A volunteer in the room asked what was wrong. I pointed out the Pintail and explained that she was supposed to be dead and that she probably couldn’t quack any louder because she undoubtedly had a sore throat.
“How could you have tried to kill her? That’s monstrous.”
We took her back to the duck pen, made certain she had plenty to eat, and then put her in a pet carrier, drove her to Lake Merritt some distance from the Rotary Nature Center, and let her swim away, softly quaking.