Truly Nolen’s Gonzales Saves Harris’s Hawk from Hazard

PHOENIX, Ariz. – It started as just another day on the job for Steven Gonzales, pest control technician, Truly Nolen Pest & Termite Control. He and a trainee were performing quarterly service at a client’s home in the Scottsdale, Ariz. area when they rounded the corner of the house’s exterior. A Harris’s hawk was flailing helplessly in the backyard pool. Struggling to keep its head above water, the bird was using its sharp talons to grip a drain for some stability.

Gonzales sprang into action.

“You could tell she was really weak and was fighting to stay up,” he said. “Her body was almost completely submerged so only the top of her head was completely above the water. I had to un-pry her talons and, even though she was weak, the strain from her talons was incredible.” 

Truly Nolen

Gonzales took the bird out of the water and first rested her on the pool’s ledge. He picked her up again, letting the bird climb up his arm. The two “hung out” for a while, he said, as the hawk dried off. He relocated the bird to the side of the client’s yard before calling Wild At Heart, an Arizona-based raptor rescue organization.

Ever since he was a child, Gonzales said, he has had good relationships with animals. His high tolerance for pain also meant he wasn’t bothered when the young adult female hawk used her sharp talons to walk on him. However, the birds should be handled with leather gloves, he said. Harris’s hawks are beautiful creatures, he said, but PMPs looking to help other raptor birds in similar situations should “tread with caution.”

Regardless, he said, if you can’t help the bird, call someone who can right away.

Wild At Heart allowed Gonzales to name the bird. He called her “Lucena” after his daughter. She recovered alongside other injured, ill and orphaned birds of prey being cared for by the organization. When he visited her at the sanctuary a few days after the rescue, he said she looked like “a whole new hawk.” Lucena the Harris’s hawk was flying and almost up to a normal weight, Gonzales said.

Not long after helping her out of the pool, Gonzales helped release the hawk back into the wild. He said the feeling of seeing her rehabilitated back into the wild was awesome.

Gonzales said he will continue to volunteer with Wild At Heart even after Lucena’s return into the wild.