In the village of Flamstead, Hertfordshire, a Harris’s hawk, a type of hawk, has been randomly attacking people for weeks. It has finally been captured by another Harris, a 40-year-old man named Steve Harris, a type of human.
The Harris’s hawk, which if Steve Harris chose to keep would then be Harris’s Harris’ Hawk, had swooped down and pecked at around 50 people in the past few weeks, oftentimes drawing blood. It was a menace. There’s even footage of one Flamstead resident going about his business as the demon hawk swooped down to slap him in the head.
The bird is believed to have escaped from captivity and has been on a rampage ever since, attacking anyone in its path, including an elderly man who needed hospital treatment after a head injury.
Hawk Behind String of 50 Attacks in British Village Finally Captured
The situation had become untenable for village residents, particularly for the families whose backyards the hawk chose to call home, who found their backyards unusable as taking so much as a foot outside would draw the hawk’s ire.
The hawk indiscriminately attacked anything in its way, leaving villagers running scared and mail deliveries undelivered. Steve Harris had had enough. His children were terrified of venturing into their own backyard for fear that the hawk would strike.
Armed with a falconer’s cage and his hefty balls on full metaphorical display, Harris trapped the hawk after a tense chase that had the bird swooping at him. I’ll let Harris (the man) tell the harrowing tale:
“It had been chasing me around the village when I went for a run, and when I got back it flew down to the top of my shed. The falconer had left me a cage. I was using it to protect myself and I got brave enough when the bird was about a foot away, and I threw it over the top of it, trapping it. I screamed out for the falconer to come and help, and he came and tamed it.”
As for why this hawk was being such a piece of shit, that can likely be attributed to a mix of being young and hormonal, and maybe even a little malnourished after months of evading capture, at least that’s according to the aforementioned falconer, a guy named Alan Greenhalgh. He also notes that the hawk had grown “as fat as a barrel” after it had eaten its fair share of food as the villagers attempted to lure it into traps.
The hawk’s reign of terror has ended. “It’s a relief for us and the whole village,” Harris (the man) told the BBC.
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