He Speaks for the Birds
Bob Sallinger once lowered himself six feet down a hole of human excrement to save a bird. It was a baby peregrine falcon, about 40 days old, that fell off the Fremont Bridge before it could fly. Unfortunately for Sallinger, the bird got lost and made its way into a hole that the homeless had been using as a latrine.
Bob Sallinger once lowered himself six feet down a hole of human excrement to save a bird.
It was a baby peregrine falcon, about 40 days old, that fell off the Fremont Bridge before it could fly. Unfortunately for Sallinger, the bird got lost and made its way into a hole that the homeless had been using as a latrine.
There was nothing to do but go in. It wasn’t pleasant, and the bird didn’t make it easy, flapping about.
“I got it out, held it up to his parents, put him down and ran,” Sallinger says, vividly recalling the experience from 15 years ago.
It was a worthwhile sacrifice, he says, considering that peregrines as well as other bird species were nearly endangered in Oregon and the rest of the country in the 1970s, due to the pesticide DDT.
