Read Jackie's Wild Seattle for Free Online Page A

well, is she?”
    â€œBoth wings had to be pinned,” Jackie said measuredly. “That’s quite an operation for a very delicate, very young,very wild creature. Eagles can fly with pins in their wing bones. It all depends on how much movement the injury will allow. For now, she’s on antibiotics. Time will tell. I’m even more worried that there’s so little fight in her.”
    â€œShe’s been fed?”
    â€œWe tube-fed her last night after the operation and we will again as soon as Rosie comes in. Her medicine is mixed in with the food. Neal, I’m heading back to make breakfast. Would you take the kids to see the outdoor pens and bring them right back so they can get dressed and down for breakfast?”

6
DON’T WORRY, YOU CAN TRUST ME
    Uncle Neal pulled himself away from the pathetic-looking eagle and took us outside. We raced through the center’s rehab environments: there were pens, runs, various ramshackle plywood buildings, big flying enclosures. We missed quite a few of the distinguished guests in the outdoor area, but we saw raccoons, possums, cottontail rabbits, baby skunks, river otters, and birds of prey, including eleven bald eagles, five kinds of hawks, and a trio of great horned owls. We were about to run down a path that led into the farthest corner of the rehab area when Neal called after us, “I don’t think Jackie wants us down there. The coyotes and deer are supposed to see people as little as possible.”
    We looked in on a water theme park for geese, ducks, herons, cranes, and a trumpeter swan. We stared at a full-grown mountain lion named Sasha—a permanent resident—pacing inside her well-padlocked chain-linkenclosure. Her pen had three big sections for her to roam around in. The cougar stopped pacing, bared her fangs, and hissed at us. I mean, she was six or seven feet from head to tail. I shrank back, and Cody about jumped out of his skin.
    Through a peephole in a large corral of solid plywood, we spotted a bear cub, a living teddy bear. A black bear, Neal said it was. The cub lived in a chain-link enclosure with multiple rooms like the cougar’s. On account of the plywood blind, it couldn’t see any other animals, or people coming and going. It had a den of sorts inside a stack of hay bales, wooden platforms to play on, and a tree to climb, but it couldn’t see out except for the sky above a ceiling of metal mesh. “Poor bear,” I said. “It’s in solitary confinement.”
    â€œThis is making me sad,” Cody told his uncle.
    â€œI know how you feel,” Neal said, “but if it’s ever going to be wild, it can’t get comfortable around humans. Otherwise it would be a dead bear soon after it was released.”
    The cub was batting around a stick, running after it, tumbling over a log, sitting on its haunches. “Watch,” Neal said. “See that door swinging open, the one attached to the clinic? Here comes Big Bear.”
    It was hard to get a good look through the peepholes. A full-grown bear on the path between the plywood fence and the chain-link pen was walking along with a bowl in its hands. “Wait a second,” Cody said indignantly. “That’s somebody in a bear suit. Look at the gloves.”
    â€œForgot to mention,” Uncle Neal said with a smile. “That’s Rosie, the clinic manager.”
    Big Bear got down on her hands and knees, entered a section of the pen closed off to the cub. She set out the food, left, then pulled on a rope that hoisted a door like a guillotine. The cub hesitated at the opening, stood up sniffing,then came on through for its food.
    We passed back through the clinic and were going out the front door when we ran smack into the wild-haired boy I’d spotted the night before, the one about my age. He was on his way inside.
    I don’t know who was the most surprised. I’m sure I was the most embarrassed, in my