The back talon landed next to my eye. My fingers are on the other two 'holes'.

Thursday, I was served the scariest injury I have had (in 15 years of doing rehab). It was just plain carelessness. The bird was being held, I had trimmed the beak and was examining the feet. I did two things wrong: I stuck my face in the strike zone and I didn’t communicate with my helper on which foot I ‘had’. The bird was an Australian Little Eagle. And as we all know, them things have big feet. Complacency came very close to costing me an eye.

I had to clear the aviaries out and keep all the birds in boxes on Thursday. The tree loppers came and severely pruned our Chinese Pepper trees. This was good, as they were severely overgrown. I was telling one of the guys about how I’d been injured, and, given that his job includes lots of time around chain saws, he was able to relate. He knew the importance of keeping on guard, being aware and communicating with your team.

Close calls are a gift: it could have been so much worse. Now I have a week of grotty tum on antibiotics and a little scratch next to my eye that’ll be a faint (I hope it’ll be faint!) scar. Hopefully these will make me remember the danger of complacency for quite some time! Certainly “getting back on the horse” has been interesting. Ellee is the most inoffensive person I know- yet I kept having flashbacks of her foot striking my face as I was handling her the day after.

Developing their trust in me is a BIG component of what I do when I train animals. But we animal trainers can forget that it works both ways: we need to develop trust of our animals.  So Ellee and I have overdrawn trust accounts at the moment, and we will need to have many little positive experiences together to build those balances back up. And I will need to reinforce myself (be aware and give myself kudos) for trusting my self too: my judgement and ability to keep myself safe. That’s called (re)building self confidence.

A nifty mini cherry picker helps with the trim

Marra with Ellee