How To Handle It When Your Kids Find A Wild Raptor In The Yard

Tuesday morning. 7:14 AM. I'm standing in my kitchen wearing a grey fleece robe that smells vaguely of sour milk and defeat, holding my third cup of lukewarm coffee. It's the kind of morning where everything is just slightly damp and chaotic, and I'm literally just trying to find a single moment of peace before the school run. And then Maya, who's seven going on seventeen, bursts through the back door. The screen door slams so hard the windows rattle in their frames.

She is holding a battered Amazon Prime box. Leo, my four-year-old agent of absolute destruction, is right behind her, wielding a stick like a tiny, aggressive wizard.

"Mom," Maya pants, out of breath. "We rescued an eagle."

I look into the box. Staring back at me is a furious-looking ball of white fluff with giant, prehistoric yellow feet and a beak that looks perfectly designed to remove my fingers from my hand. It was definitely not an eagle. And it definitely wasn't a baby sparrow. It was a very angry, very sharp little fledgling bird of prey.

"Put it down," I whispered, backing away slowly.

"It's an orphan!" Leo screamed, stabbing the air with his stick.

I was—wait, let me back up. I'm not a nature girl. My idea of interacting with wildlife is watching a squirrel steal tomatoes from my garden through the safety of double-paned glass. I've no survival skills. If society collapses, I'll be the first to go because I don't know how to start a fire without a Duraflame log. So having a literal dinosaur in my kitchen wasn't on my Tuesday bingo card.

The great backyard kidnapping incident

I immediately yelled for my husband, Mark. Mark was upstairs on a 7:30 AM Zoom call with his finance team. He came running downstairs wearing a crisp blue dress shirt on top and plaid flannel boxer shorts on the bottom, which really added to the surreal majesty of the moment.

He peered into the box. "That's a velociraptor," he said, very unhelpfully.

I spent the next ten minutes aggressively Googling while making Mark hold the box away from the dog, Buster, who's a Golden Retriever with zero brain cells and a strong desire to make friends with things that want to kill him. I was frantically typing things like "infant hawk in my kitchen what the hell do I do."

Here's what I learned during my panic attack. If you find a tiny raptor with feathers hopping around on the ground, and it looks like a grumpy old man in a down coat, it's probably a fledgling. Fledglings are basically toddlers. They're learning to fly, they're super awkward, and their parents are usually sitting in a tree nearby judging them. Which means Maya hadn't rescued an orphan. She had kidnapped a child in broad daylight.

I also learned about the feet. Mark thought it might be a pigeon because he watched a documentary once and thinks he's an ornithologist now. But pigeon chicks have pink or red feet. This thing had bright yellow feet and talons that looked like they belonged in a Jurassic Park movie. Yellow feet equals raptor.

Terrifying.

Put the bird down and back away slowly

We had to get it out of the house. But you can't just toss a young hawk out the back door like a bad Tinder date. You have to make sure it's safe.

I read somewhere on a deeply stressful wildlife rescue forum that if a cat has touched the bird, the bird needs to go to a professional immediately. Apparently, cat saliva is basically a toxic wasteland. My doctor, Dr. Miller, actually told me something similar when Leo got scratched by a feral neighborhood cat last year—she was like, "Cat mouths are essentially biohazards," and put him on antibiotics instantly. Thankfully, we don't own a cat, and Buster the idiot dog hadn't licked it yet.

Maya was crying because she wanted to feed it milk from a dropper. DO NOT FEED IT MILK. Or bread. Or water. Or anything. Birds of prey eat meat, and if you force water down their throats, they can literally aspirate and die. You just shove a warm rice sock in the cardboard box, gently cover the poor terrified thing with a towel to keep it dark, and pray to whatever god you believe in while you wait for the wildlife center to call you back.

Mark grabbed one of Leo's old Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesie from the laundry pile to use as a makeshift towel. Honestly, as a daily outfit, it's just okay for us. Don't get me wrong, the organic cotton is ridiculously soft and it washes perfectly, which is great because Leo's skin breaks out if you even look at it wrong. But Leo has this giant, 99th-percentile head, and trying to stretch a sleeveless bodysuit over him when he's thrashing around always made me sweat. But as an emergency dark-cover for a kidnapped bird? Absolutely perfect. It calmed the little guy down instantly.

My extremely brief career in wildlife rescue

While the bird sat in the dark box under Leo's old onesie, I finally got a human on the phone at the local wildlife center. She sounded exhausted. I explained the situation.

"Is it bleeding?" she asked.

"No."

"Is it shivering?"

"No, but it looks really mad."

She sighed. "Put it back where you found it, ma'am. The parents are watching you."

We carried the box out to the rhododendron bush. The bird was gnawing aggressively on the cardboard edge. It reminded me of Leo when he was cutting his first molars. Oh god, the teething phase. He would bite my shoulder, the coffee table, the dog's tail. I remember being so desperate I bought the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy Soothing Gum Relief at 3 AM. Honestly? My favorite thing I ever bought for him. It has these amazing flat little textured edges that he would just ferociously bite instead of my collarbone, and because it's food-grade silicone, I didn't panic about weird plastics. Plus, you can literally just chuck it in the dishwasher when it gets covered in gross toddler spit. I kind of wanted to offer it to the bird right then.

We tipped the box. The tiny bird of prey hopped out, ruffled its feathers, and glared at us. Then it just sort of waddled under the bush.

Some people say you can nail a Tupperware container to a tree to make a fake nest for them, but I'm barely trusted with a hammer in this house, so we skipped that part entirely.

Actually teaching them something useful for once

I told the kids we couldn't keep it, which led to a massive meltdown from Leo. I tried to turn it into a "teachable nature moment," whatever the hell that means.

The wildlife lady had told me this crazy fact on the phone to calm me down. Apparently—and I might be completely butchering the science here—sometimes wild bald eagles will accidentally adopt an infant hawk. Like, their maternal hormones just short-circuit their brains, they forget they're supposed to eat the hawk, and they just raise it alongside their eaglets. Which honestly makes me feel a lot better about my own chaotic parenting. At least I haven't accidentally adopted my dinner.

I told Maya and Leo this fact. They didn't care. They just wanted to watch the bird.

So we sat by the window. The rehabber had told us to observe it from a distance. Which reminded me of when I tried to get Maya to "observe" her toys peacefully as a baby. I had bought her this gorgeous Wooden Baby Gym | Rainbow Play Gym Set with Animal Toys. I had this whole Pinterest-mom fantasy of her lying quietly under it, peacefully engaging with the little wooden elephant while I drank hot coffee and read a book. Reality? She just grabbed the wooden rings and tried to rip the entire structure down onto her face until she got mad and cried. It looked amazing in our living room, though.

Anyway, the point is, parenting is mostly just observing chaos from a safe distance and hoping nobody gets hurt.

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We watched the bush for two hours. Eventually, we heard a terrifying screech, and a massive adult hawk swooped down into the tree above the bush. The parents had found their toddler.

Mark went back to his Zoom call, still in his boxers. I poured my cold coffee down the sink. And Buster the dog went back to sleep on the rug.

Before you go Google how to build a nest out of twigs and dryer lint, maybe just go browse the sustainable baby toys at Kianao instead. Leave the wildlife to the professionals, guys. It's way less stressful.

My Messy FAQ About Finding Wild Birds

Can my kid catch a disease from touching a wild bird?

Look, I panicked about rabies immediately, but my doctor told me birds don't carry rabies. They can carry Salmonella and weird mites, though. If your kid touches a wild animal, just march them to the sink and scrub their hands with soap and hot water like you're prepping for surgery. It's fine, but seriously, wash the hands.

What if my dog or cat already licked or touched the bird?

If a cat touches it, call a wildlife rehabber immediately. Don't wait. Cat saliva has bacteria that's super lethal to birds, and the bird will need antibiotics within hours or it won't make it. If your dog licked it, still call a professional just to be safe, because dogs have gross mouths too. And then maybe brush your dog's teeth.

How do I explain to my toddler that we can't keep it as a pet?

I just flat out lied and said it was illegal and the police would come arrest Mommy. Which is seriously true! It's a federal crime under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to keep birds of prey. But really, just tell them the bird's mommy is crying and looking for it. Guilt works wonders on four-year-olds.

Will the mom bird attack us if we try to put the baby back?

They aren't going to dive-bomb you unless you're near a nest and they feel super threatened, but they're protective. Just put the bird in a box, place it near where you found it, open the box, and walk away quickly. Don't linger around taking Instagram photos. Let the parents do their job.

Is it true that if I touch the bird, the parents will smell me and reject it?

Total myth. Birds honestly have a terrible sense of smell. They aren't going to abandon their baby just because your kid's sticky, jelly-covered hands touched its feathers. You can absolutely put a healthy baby bird back in its nest or under a bush without ruining its life.