Air Force Academy
Travels on airlines. Sits with the rest of the passengers but makes some of them frightened and uncomfortable. Stays in hotels and usually sleeps on the dresser, the floor or under a chair. Poops anywhere – often on a newspaper. Here we’re describing:
A) The reasons the other Rolling Stones hated touring with Keith Richards.
B) Just a few of the subtle indications that Don Imus is not dealing well with his firing.
C) The majestic Air Force Academy falcons that travel around the nation on ambassador missions, clinging to the leather-clad arms and hands of their cadet trainers and caretakers while living in style.
The correct answer is… C. So let’s say hello now to some of the 15 actual falcons that are carrying on a proud 48-year tradition of college mascots that can pluck a sparrow off a branch at 200 mph.
The star performers include Yeti, a 4-year-old who astounds audiences with his accurate dives onto a fake mouse. Then there’s Ace, a super-aggressive falcon with a lightning-quick and very sharp beak, a falcon the cadet trainers reward quickly and carefully with food after each behavior because, well, because it’s nearly impossible to pilot a fighter jet without fingers.
Apollo, a peregrine mix, and Banshee round out the show, which involves releasing the birds and enticing them to fly at another trainer, usually hundreds of yards away, who is swinging a “lure” on a leather strap.
If the falcon responds with a dive and a landing, it is fed a mouth-watering meal consisting of one half of a quail, the same basic type of bird, by the way, that Vice President Dick Cheney would have shot in February of 2006 if his lawyer friend hadn’t popped up out of nowhere.
The performing falcons, along with others tethered to a perch and viewed close-up, are seen by hundreds of thousands of people each year. The falcons, the academy’s official mascots, appear at events that include football games, air shows and even the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York.
Some 16 cadets work with the birds housed in a facility on a hillside high above the academy’s vast athletic fields. The falcons live for 15 or more years in captivity, about three times longer than the life span of their wild brothers and sisters.
Of course wild falcons don’t have a team of cadets carefully cutting up prime quail meat for them each day.
“They only get the breast meat and some of the best leg meat,” freshman cadet Patrick Arkwright said Wednesday as he used scissors to remove the head, lower legs and tail of a dead quail, one of hundreds packed in plastic bags and refrigerated at bird headquarters.
At about 4 p.m., it was time to fly. Outside, cadet Jacque Harrier was transferring the large Banshee from her arm to the arm of cadet Robert Mobley. Far below, cadet Janice Contreras waited, swinging the leather lure on the strap and tightening her fist into the protective leather glove.
Suddenly, in an explosion of power, Banshee left Mobley’s arm and rocketed downward. Falcons in a full dive or “stoop” – usually onto the back of an unfortunate smaller bird – can hit 250 mph.
Instead of a single-pass landing, though, Banshee turned away and ripped through the air, covering a hundred yards in just seconds. On the third go-around Banshee pounced on the lure. The white and gray falcon with the piercing eyes was immediately rewarded with half of a quail.
Cadet Danny Samson stood nearby. He has been enthralled by falcons since he was 10 years old and living with his military family in the Middle East.
“We went into the deserts to watch the nomads fly their hunting falcons,” Samson said. “Now I get to work with falcons at the academy. I’m lucky.”
Corey Lohmiller, a freshman cadet from Denver, feels lucky, too. Sort of. In the first days of their training, the young falconers were told not to pull away if a bird clamped a beak onto a body part. Trying to pull away would tear the skin open.
“They told us to stay still and calmly say, ‘Help,”‘ Lohmiller recalled.
On the second day, a falcon’s beak latched onto his hand.
“I tried to stay calm and say ‘Help,”‘ he said. “But the people around me said it sounded more like someone screaming ‘Oh God! Someone help me! The bird is eating my thumb!”‘
Staff writer Rich Tosches writes each Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at rtosches@denverpost.com.
