Hawk Accidentally Test-drives Semi on Interstate 80

By Adam Brandolph, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Talk about a wing and a prayer.
A trucker pulled into a Clearfield truck stop on Wednesday, surprising two mechanics and another trucker with a "mean-looking" red-tailed hawk clinging to the truck's side mirror.
The hawk flew into the truck's windshield, shattering it, then slid and became wedged between the mirror and the side of the 18-wheel tractor-trailer.

"It was still well alive when the truck pulled in," said Don Still, a trucker from Brimfield, Ill., en route to Boston, who watched at the Sapp Bros. travel center off Interstate 80. "It was pretty big. I wasn't going to get near the poor thing."

Service manager Bob Rothrock said he and another mechanic covered the hawk with a towel, pulled it off the mirror and put it in a cardboard box.

"The bird was pretty docile," Rothrock said. "It sat there and let us grab its wing out of the mirror."

They called the Pennsylvania Game Commission but eventually took the bird to a nearby veterinarian.

Red-tailed hawks, the most common hawks in North America, weigh about three pounds in adulthood and have a wingspan of about four feet, according to the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology.

A receptionist at the Clearfield Animal Hospital in Woodland described this hawk's injuries as slight and said the staff placed it in isolation.

Rothrock said the truck stop typically deals with problems such as blown gaskets or broken taillights.

"We got a couple dead turkeys, but nothing live has ever come in," he said.

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