Virginia Hawk Grounded After Eating the Neighborhood's Chickens Like a Free Breakfast Buffet; Vets Diagnose Her as "Too Darn Fat to Fly"

Every species eventually discovers the all-you-can-eat buffet. Humans found it in Las Vegas. A hawk in Roanoke, Virginia, found it next door, and it was clucking.

The Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center says an adult female red-shouldered hawk, patient RSHA 26-2599, was found sitting in a resident's driveway about a mile from its hospital, refusing to fly. In the hawk world, that is the equivalent of a man lying on the couch after Thanksgiving and announcing he lives there now.

Vets checked for the usual suspects: broken bones, lead toxicity, eye issues, head trauma, emaciation and bruising. Emaciation was the funniest item on the list, the way "dehydration" is funny on a lifeguard. Everything came back normal, except one result, which is the result every annual physical is secretly about.

The diagnosis, in the center's own medical language: she was "too darn fat to fly." Somewhere a cardiologist wept, because he has spent thirty years trying to say it that clearly.

"We couldn't even palpate her keel due to the heavy layer of fat covering it," the center said. The keel is the breastbone a bird's flight muscles anchor to. Hers had gone into witness protection.

She weighed about two pounds, nearly a full pound over normal for a female of her species. For a hawk, a pound is not a little extra. It is a carry-on bag she cannot put in the overhead bin.

The center noted it is "RARE for wild animals to become obese without human intervention," so it opened an investigation. Was she a lost falconry bird? Was someone feeding her? Was she an escaped, illegally kept captive? Detectives eliminated every suspect except the one with feathers on its face and drumsticks on its breath.

The woman who found the hawk asked around. A couple of weeks later she called back: her neighbors' free-roaming chickens "were disappearing at an alarming rate over the last few weeks." That is not a mystery. That is a menu.

"This queen was picking off the buffet of easy prey set out before her, eating her fill, and then snoozing in the trees nearby until she was ready to eat again," the center wrote. "The chickens were let out in the morning, she ate another, and repeat."

That is not hunting. That is a subscription service. The chickens were let out every morning like a free sample tray at Costco, and she was the woman who keeps circling back.

The hawk is now on a weight-loss diet. No word yet on whether she gets a cheat day, though local chickens strongly oppose one.

The center says this could have ended sadly if a bigger predator had found her first, because a hawk that cannot fly is just a very angry lawn ornament. Its advice: "Don't feed wildlife... Directly OR indirectly," and keep chicken runs covered.

So the moral is simple. Close the coop, cover the run, and never let a predator discover that breakfast is delivered daily. Otherwise she will eat the buffet, sleep in the trees, and repeat, until the only thing she can take off is the weight.