grinning. “Sorry.” The hold button on the phone continued to blink.
“Morning. I’m Roger Ward,” the ranger said, offering his hand to Marik first.
Marik thought how she would sketch him: oval head, round bald pate, oval wire-rimmed glasses, oval body and thighs. He wasn’t fat, though, just compact, and no taller than she was. She introduced herself and her companion.
The ranger shook hands with Rainwater. “Come on back to my office.”
Ward’s office was just what she expected. Battered wooden desk, cluttered bookcase, a faux-tile floor that felt slightly gritty underfoot. Dusty but impressive portraits of Oklahoma’s larger wildlife hung on the walls—whitetail deer, bobcat, elk, even a woolly black bear. Marik recognized the artist’s name. From atop the bookcase, mounted specimens of bobwhite quail, wood duck and wild turkey fixed them with glassy stares. There was almost room to sit down in the two straight chairs Ward offered.
“Actually,” Marik said, “the reason we came is out back in the bed of my truck. Can we bring it inside?”
Ward’s interest perked up. “An animal?”
She saw a sharp intelligence in the faded blue of his eyes. “A bald eagle, we think.”
The eyes widened. “Alive?”
“Unfortunately, no. I found it on my place this morning.”
“Killdeer Ridge, right? Where the wind farm is.”
“Right.” He had recognized her name, like everybody else since the windmills went up. Sometimes she missed being debt ridden and anonymous.
“Let’s take a look.” He grabbed his oval ranger hat from beneath the turkey’s wattle.
Why did men around here never step outdoors without a hat on?
In the alley, Rainwater carefully uncovered their cargo and they all leaned over the truck bed, arms on the sidewalls. Ranger Ward whistled through his teeth. “Isn’t that a beauty.”
“I’m guessing an immature female,” Rainwater said.
Ward checked the tail feathers. “Good eye. Most people can’t tell an immature bald eagle from a golden.” He looked up at Jace. “It isn’t banded. Any idea what killed it?”
Marik and Rainwater glanced at each other. “No visible blood or bullet wound,” Rainwater said.
“Huh. Exactly where was the eagle when you found it?”
“Up on the high ridge,” she said.
“You found it beneath the windmills?”
She nodded, her face glum.
“Uh-oh,” he said.
“You know the Gurdmans, my neighbors?”
“Not personally, but I’m familiar with their complaints about the wind farm.”
Marik sighed. “I’d like to keep this quiet until we know for sure what killed the eagle.”
“No need to make an announcement. Let’s get the carcass inside and look at it closer.”
In a back room, the ranger laid the eagle out on a table and checked it over. Within a minute, he leaned over and smelled it.
“Diazanon?” Rainwater said.
Ward gave him a sharp look. “That’s what I was thinking. Why the heck would an eagle smell like tick poison?”
“Good question,” Marik said. “My friend here suggested a necropsy.”
“Absolutely. We can learn a lot from a carcass. Birds have practically no sense of smell. It might have eaten poisoned meat despite the odor. Eagles do eat carrion sometimes.”
Ward bagged and tagged the bird, then laid it gently in a chest-type freezer. “I’ll put in a call to our chief biologist in Oklahoma City. Either he’ll get a local vet to do the necropsy, or we’ll send it to a special U.S. Fish and Wildlife installation in Wisconsin.”
“That could take a long time.”
“Yup. That’s why we’re going to freeze her. If Wendell can’t come get the carcass, I’ll have to pack it in ice and haul it to the city.”
“Maybe we should call Sam Sullivan,” Rainwater said, “up at the Sutton Avian Research Center in Bartlesville. I know they keep records on Oklahoma eagles.”
“Good idea,” Ward said. “They’ve coordinated with the department on migratory-bird incidents before.” He smiled. “You know Sam?”
“Went to school with him a year or so. And I did some volunteer work at the research center.”
“Sam’s a good guy. Knows his stuff.” He washed and dried his hands. “We need to fill out a report. Where you found it, date and time, any other circumstances.”
He led them back into his office and cleared off a space in the center of the desk. After two tries, he found a ball-point that worked. Marik and Rainwater sat, their knees touching the front of the desk, while she supplied the information the ranger asked for. He finished the paperwork and sat back in his chair, the springs squeaking.
“There’s a town meeting coming up in Silk in about a week,” she told him. “I’d sure like to know what killed the eagle before that.”
His frown looked doubtful. “It usually takes longer. But I’ll do what I can to hurry things up.”
“Do you believe an eagle would really fly into those windmill blades?”
Ward shrugged. “It’s unlikely, but it’s possible. Out in California, there was an incident like that, but those windmills were built directly in the eagles’ migration path, and it isn’t a migration month here. The trouble is, there’s a shortage of science on how the windmills might affect the ecology. Since the power companies don’t announce where the wind farms will be built much before they build them, nobody’s had a chance to map the ecology of a location beforehand. There’s no control data, we don’t know the natural patterns of the wildlife or even the plants in the area before the windmills—only after.
“Some biologists think the eagles might view the windmills as perches when the blades are still, and try it again when they’re moving.”
“That seems hard to believe.”
“Yeah, it does. But we don’t know about the songbirds or game birds in the area, either. Some might not nest there anymore because they view the wind towers as raptor perches, or the flickering shadows as raptor wings.”
Marik frowned. “Even if that’s true, wouldn’t they just move over to the next pasture or creek?”
He shrugged. “Probably.”
“Well, there aren’t any trees on Killdeer Ridge, but the killdeer still nest all over the ground up there.”
Ward smiled. “That’s good to know. Wildlife is pretty darned adaptable. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t have any left. If you want my personal opinion, we’ve got to do something to cut down fossil fuel consumption, and for producing electricity, at least, wind farms are the best idea yet. The long-term benefits to the ecology far outweigh any short-term potential for harm.” He shrugged. “But the real scientists want more proof.”
“I don’t think my neighbors’ objections have anything to do with science,” Marik said. She took a paper from a cube on his desk and jotted down a number. “That’s my cell. It’s the best way to get me.” She stood up. “I appreciate your time.”
He gave her a direct look. “Thanks for bringing the bird in. You did the right thing.”
“Yeah, well. We’ll see if good deeds go unpunished.”
She followed Rainwater out through the front entrance.