Six Hours

"When your head is too full, find something to do with your hands."

The call came in just after two.

I was in the staff room, staring at a sandwich I'd made but couldn't bring myself to eat, when the phone on the wall started ringing. The sound cut through the post-euthanasia fog I'd been drifting in, sharp and insistent, demanding attention I wasn't sure I had left to give.

Kira answered on the third ring. I listened to her side of the conversation without really processing it — the calm, professional tone she used for public enquiries, the questions designed to extract essential information from people who were often panicked or confused. Location. Type of animal. Nature of the injury. How long ago. Whether the animal was contained or mobile.

"Wedge-tail," she said, covering the mouthpiece and glancing in my direction. "Tangled in fence wire, out past Williamstown. Property owner says it's been there since this morning but they only just called."

My stomach tightened. Since this morning. That was hours of stress, hours of struggle, hours of an animal fighting against restraints it couldn't understand while its body slowly exhausted itself. Wedge-tailed eagles were powerful birds — Australia's largest raptor, with a wingspan that could exceed two metres and talons capable of taking down young kangaroos. But power meant nothing against fence wire. Power just meant they fought harder, injured themselves more severely, used up reserves they'd need for recovery.

"I can go," I heard myself say.

Kira raised an eyebrow. "You sure? You've had a long day already."

She didn't mention Pip specifically, but I knew she knew. Word travelled fast in a facility this size, and Kira had been doing this work long enough to recognise the particular hollowness that followed euthanasia. She was giving me an out, a chance to step back and let someone else handle the callout.

I should have taken it. I was tired, emotionally wrung out, probably not in the best state to manage a dangerous rescue. But the alternative was going home, sitting in my room, letting the silence fill up with everything I didn't want to think about. At least the callout would give me something to do with my hands.

"I'm sure."

Kira studied me for a moment, then nodded and returned to the call, jotting down details on the notepad by the phone. Address, property owner's name, directions to the gate. When she hung up, she tore off the page and handed it to me.

"Dennis is out back checking on the macropods. Let him know — he'll want to take the lead on this one. Wedge-tails aren't for amateurs."

"I've handled raptors before."

"Not like this, you haven't." Kira's tone wasn't unkind, just matter-of-fact. "A wedge-tail that's been fighting wire for six hours is going to be exhausted, stressed, and looking for something to take it out on. Dennis has done dozens of these. Follow his lead, keep your hands where he tells you, and you'll be fine."

I folded the paper into my pocket. "Anything else?"

"Yeah." She turned back toward the phone, already reaching for the logbook to record the callout. "Don't get yourself killed. I'm not doing the paperwork."

I found Dennis by the boundary fence, leaning on a post and watching a group of kangaroos graze in the afternoon light. He listened without interrupting as I relayed the details — Williamstown, wedge-tail tangled in fence wire, property owner only just called but the bird had been there since morning.

"Six hours." He shook his head slowly. "That's a long time for a bird that size to be fighting wire."

"Kira said the bloke sounded pretty rattled."

"They usually are, by the time they call." He pushed off from the fence. "Right. I'll load the vehicle. Grab your gear and meet me out front in ten."

The property owner met us at the gate — a weathered man in his sixties, wearing the kind of work clothes that had seen decades of hard use. His name was Gary, and his hands shook slightly as he fumbled with the latch.

"Been there since this morning," he said, his voice carrying the particular guilt of someone who knew they should have called sooner. "I thought maybe it'd work itself free, you know? Didn't want to stress it out more by getting close. But then it stopped struggling, and I thought—" He swallowed hard. "I thought maybe it was dead. But it's not. It's just... sitting there. Watching."

"You did the right thing calling," Dennis said, his tone professionally reassuring. "Best not to approach them yourself. Those talons can do serious damage."

Gary led us across the paddock in silence, his boots leaving prints in the winter-damp grass. The fence line was maybe three hundred metres from the house, running along the boundary where cleared pasture met a scraggly patch of remnant bushland. I could see something on the fence from halfway across — a dark shape that didn't belong, too large and too still to be anything but what we'd come for.

The closer we got, the worse it looked.

The eagle was hanging at an awkward angle, its left wing extended and wrapped in wire, its body suspended half-off the fence post it had apparently been trying to land on. The wing wasn't just tangled — it was wound through multiple loops of barbed wire, the barbs themselves buried in flesh and feather. Dried blood darkened the wing from shoulder to primary feathers, and fresher blood glistened where the bird had clearly resumed struggling at some point during the day.

"Jesus," Dennis muttered under his breath. "That's worse than I expected."

The eagle's head turned toward us as we approached, tracking our movement with eyes that burned with something between fear and fury. Its beak gaped open in warning, and a low hissing sound emerged from its throat — the threat display of a predator that had spent six hours fighting for its life and still wasn't ready to surrender.

"How do you want to handle this?" I asked, keeping my voice low.

Dennis didn't answer immediately. He was studying the entanglement, his expression grim, and I could see him working through the problem — the angles, the tension, the risks. This wasn't going to be a simple blanket-and-cut job. The wire was wound too tight, the wing too badly positioned. Any wrong move could cause the bird to panic and injure itself further, or injure us.

"We'll need to stabilise the wing before we cut," he said finally. "If it thrashes while I'm working on the wire, it could tear the whole thing off."

The words landed heavily. I'd seen wing amputations before — birds who'd come in too damaged to save the limb, who'd survived but could never fly again. For a wedge-tailed eagle, that was essentially a death sentence. They couldn't be released without flight, and they didn't adapt well to permanent captivity. An eagle that couldn't fly was an eagle that would spend the rest of its life in a cage, slowly going mad from the confinement.

"You think it's that bad?"

"I think we won't know until we get closer." Dennis pulled on his heavy gloves, flexing his fingers to test the fit. "But yeah. It might be that bad."

We gathered our equipment and approached the fence slowly, giving the eagle time to assess us, to understand that we weren't rushing in for an attack. Gary hung back near the ute, clearly relieved to have handed the problem off to someone else. I didn't blame him. Most people had no idea what to do with an injured raptor, and the smart ones knew enough to stay clear.

At five metres, the eagle's threat display intensified. Its good wing mantled outward, trying to make itself look larger despite the awkward position. The hissing became a harsh, rasping cry that echoed across the paddock. This close, I could see the individual barbs embedded in the wing tissue, could see the way the wire had cut through the delicate leading edge where the most important flight feathers attached.

"I'm going to try to get behind it," Dennis said. "You come in from the right with the blanket. If we can hood it, it'll calm down enough for me to work."

"And if it doesn't calm down?"

"Then we improvise."

I circled wide, keeping my movements slow and predictable, the blanket held ready in both hands. The eagle's head swivelled to track me, its attention now divided between the two potential threats. Up close, the bird was even more impressive than I'd expected — the sheer size of it, the powerful curve of its beak, the talons gripping the fence post with a strength that had bent the wire beneath them. This was a creature built for killing, for soaring on thermals above the ranges, for ruling the sky. Seeing it reduced to this — bloody and tangled and afraid — felt like witnessing something sacred being desecrated.

"Ready?" Dennis asked.

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

"On three. One... two..."

I moved on three, stepping in fast and swinging the blanket toward the eagle's head. For a fraction of a second, I thought it was going to work — the fabric was descending, the bird was turning away, everything was happening the way it was supposed to.

Then the eagle struck.

The movement was faster than I could track — a blur of talons and fury as the bird lashed out with its free leg. I felt the impact through the blanket, felt something catch and tear, and then pain exploded across my forearm as one talon raked through the fabric and into flesh.

I didn't let go. Some instinct deeper than pain kept my hands clenched on the blanket, kept me pressing forward even as blood started soaking through my sleeve. The fabric settled over the eagle's head, blocking its vision, and the bird's struggles became less directed — still violent, but no longer aimed.

"Hold it!" Dennis was beside me now, his hands joining mine on the blanket, adding his weight to keep the bird immobilised. "You're bleeding."

"I know." The words came out through gritted teeth. "Just get the wire."

Dennis hesitated for just a moment — I could see him weighing the options, calculating whether to stop and deal with my injury or push forward while we had the eagle contained. Then he nodded once and moved toward the wing.

"Keep the head covered. Don't let it see."

I pressed down harder, feeling the eagle's heartbeat hammering against my palms, feeling its body shudder with each laboured breath. My forearm was throbbing now, a deep ache that pulsed in time with my own heartbeat, and I could feel blood running down toward my wrist. The gloves had protected my hands, but the blanket hadn't been thick enough to stop the talon from reaching my arm.

Dennis was working at the wire, his wire cutters snipping through the loops one at a time. Each cut released a small amount of tension, and each release made the eagle flinch, its body jerking against the restraint as though expecting a new source of pain. The process was agonisingly slow — cut, pause, assess, cut again — and I could feel my grip weakening as blood loss and adrenaline took their toll.

"Almost there," Dennis muttered. "One more section."

The eagle chose that moment to renew its struggles.

It must have sensed the loosening of the wire, must have felt the possibility of freedom opening up. Whatever the reason, it exploded into motion beneath the blanket, wings thrashing, body twisting, the fence shuddering with the force of its desperation. I lost my grip on one corner of the blanket, and suddenly the bird's head was partially exposed, one wild eye visible through the gap, fixing on me with an intensity that felt like accusation.

"Hold it!" Dennis shouted.

I grabbed for the blanket, trying to recover the coverage, but my injured arm wasn't responding the way it should. The movement was clumsy, too slow, and the eagle's beak snapped at the space where my hand had been a moment before.

Dennis made a decision. He abandoned finesse and simply cut — one hard snip through the remaining wire, accepting whatever damage the sudden release might cause. The eagle's wing came free with a sickening lurch, and the bird tumbled off the fence post, hitting the ground in a tangle of blanket and feathers and wire fragments.

"Carrier!" Dennis barked. "Now!"

I grabbed the carrier from where we'd set it down, my hands slippery with blood, and held it open while Dennis gathered the thrashing bundle of eagle and blanket. The transfer was ugly — nothing like the controlled procedure we'd practiced, nothing like the calm, professional rescue I'd imagined. Just two people wrestling with a terrified animal, trying to contain it before anyone got hurt worse than they already had.

The carrier door slammed shut. The eagle screamed inside — a sound of rage and fear and exhaustion that seemed to go on forever. Then, gradually, it subsided into silence.

Dennis and I stood there, breathing hard, neither of us moving.

"Let me see your arm," he said finally.

I pulled back my sleeve, wincing as the fabric peeled away from the wound. The talon had opened a gash maybe four inches long, running diagonally across my forearm. It was bleeding freely, but the blood was red rather than dark — no arterial damage, probably no serious harm. It would need cleaning, probably stitches, but it wasn't life-threatening.

"Could've been worse," Dennis said, pulling a first aid kit from his pocket. "Could've got you in the face."

"Lucky me."

He cleaned the wound with antiseptic wipes, his touch surprisingly gentle for hands that spent most of their time building fences and wrangling livestock. I stood still and let him work, my eyes on the carrier where the eagle had gone quiet.

"Wing's bad," Dennis said, not looking up from his task. "Saw it when it came free. Multiple lacerations, probably tendon damage. Might be fractured too."

"Releasable?"

The question hung in the air between us. Dennis finished wrapping gauze around my arm, secured it with tape, and finally met my eyes.

"Probably not."

I nodded, absorbing the words. We'd got to the bird, freed it from the wire, managed the rescue without anyone dying. By most measures, that counted as success. But looking at the carrier, listening to the silence inside, I couldn't make myself feel anything but tired.

"We should get back," I said. "Get it assessed."

"Yeah." Dennis started gathering the equipment, his movements heavy with the same exhaustion I felt. "We should."

Gary was hovering near the ute when we returned, his face pale as he took in my bloodied sleeve and the quiet carrier.

"Is it... will it be okay?"

"We'll know more after the vet has a look," Dennis said, his tone carefully neutral. "We'll call you with an update."

Gary nodded, but I could see he understood what we weren't saying. Six hours tangled in barbed wire, a badly damaged wing, the slim odds of an eagle recovering enough to return to the wild. He'd called too late, and we'd all have to live with whatever that meant.

We loaded the carrier into the ute and climbed in. My arm was throbbing steadily now, a constant pulse of pain that matched my heartbeat. The eagle was still silent in the back, either resting or too exhausted to protest anymore.

Dennis started the engine but didn't immediately pull away. He sat there for a moment, hands on the wheel, staring at nothing.

"Some days," he said quietly, "you do everything right and it still doesn't matter."

I didn't have an answer for that. I just sat there, cradling my injured arm, watching the afternoon light slant across Gary's paddock as we finally pulled away.