70. Fowl is Fair
KIM: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I’m Kim Askew.
AMY: And I’m Amy Helmes…. And for those of you who weren’t aware, my married name is actually Amy Fowler, which I only clarify here because it sort of comes into play for today’s episode.
KIM: Oh, yeah, it totally does. I hadn’t thought about that. So tell us more, please.
AMY: So, I guess the meaning of the name “Fowler” comes from a trade back in the Middle Ages. It’s an occupational name for a wild bird hunter. Somebody who catches birds for food or sport. Today, we’re talking about falconry, which is a related idea. But in the case of falconry, you’re actually using birds of prey to hunt other, smaller birds, as well as other small game like rabbits and squirrels.
KIM: Okay, soI’m so excited to talk about this today, because I just finished reading Lauren Groff’s new book, Matrix, (I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT. It’s incredible.) And there’s actually a falcon at the beginning of this book, and I don’t want to give it away, anything that happens, but it really sets the tone for the story.
AMY: Okay, yeah. You had told me that you were reading it, and I’m intrigued.
KIM: Yes.
AMY: And I’m actually still in awe of the amount of books you manage to read outside of the books we are reading for this podcast.
KIM: I know, you’re probably like, “Why are you reading other books?” I’m fitting it all in somehow, trust me.
AMY: “Get back to your homework!”
KIM: Yeah, totally.
AMY: No, no, no. I love it. I love it, actually. So there are a number of other books about the sport of falconry and hawks, which we’ll touch on a bit later in this episode, but first I want to talk about what sparked the idea for this episode. Because you kind of think of falconry as a lost art, you know — something out of history books. But I was reading an article in The Los Angeles Times a few months ago about the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures here in Los Angeles. The story was all about this Harris hawk named Spencer, whose job it is to ward off pigeons that might nest over the museum’s open-air terrace or hang out on the building’s signature glass dome.
KIM: I love this…. So this museum that Amy’s talking about is actually smack in the middle of the city… it’s kind of crazy to think they’re using this ancient technique to ward off pigeons in dense urban areas, but I also know they frequently use falcons for the same purpose in New York City. How cool is that?
AMY: Yeah, so if you’re ever visiting a city museum and you did NOT get pooped on by a pigeon during the visit, you may, in fact, have trained hawks to thank for that!
KIM: It’s also common for vineyard owners to bring falconers in to keep blackbirds away from the grapes, and even landfills use hawks to keep scavenger birds, like seagulls, away. So there are still people doing this as a living.
AMY: So getting back to Spencer, the Academy Museum’s winged employee… he comes about twice a week to the museum. (When he’s in a “foul mood,” (I had to get that pun in there), but no, apparently sometimes when he’s not in the right mindset, his brother Shady fills in to do the work). Their handler’s name is Lindsey Benger, who works for a company named Hawk Proz. And they actually have to mix up the days and times they come to the museum, because the pigeons are smart enough to figure out if there’s a regular schedule when the hawks are coming.
KIM: Okay, I have two things to say here. One of them, I think we should be saying “wing-ED”, because we’re talking about falconry.
AMY: “Wing-ED.” Yes.
KIM: And I’m sorry, that is the most … Hawk Proz? We need a more poetic name. That’s too prosaic. I mean, it is very specific, but…
AMY: Hawk Proz. I see what you’re saying.
KIM: I mean, come on.
AMY: You want something more dignified. Maybe it could be like Hawk Prose — P-R-O-S-E.
KIM: Yeah, I guess if I think about it that way it makes me feel a little better.
AMY: You want something a bit more fancy.
KIM: But, either way, I’m always amazed by the fact that a falconer can let the bird go and it comes back. It seems like they would have to have a really special bond in order for that to happen.
AMY: Yeah, I think that’s true, but to be safe, I know the birds (in this article anyway) have a little GPS backpack so that handler is able to track them from her phone. Because sometimes, Spencer, the bird in the article, he does get sidetracked and ends up over in a neighborhood park. But in general, the birds know where their bread is buttered, you know, they know that by sticking with the handler they’re guaranteed a good meal. And I think they’re actually raised from birth. So Kim, you’re laughing your butt off.
KIM: Okay, here's what I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of a modern day Ladyhawke. Remember that movie?
AMY: No.
KIM: Matthew Broderick. Ladyhawke. Okay, please tell me you know it.
AMY: Okay, yes. Yes, yes.
KIM: Okay. So I'm thinking like a remake of Ladyhawke, but they have like a GPS backpack.
AMY: Oh my God. Now I’ve got to go back and watch that. I do remember the Matthew Broderick “hawk” movie.
KIM: It should just be remade anyway, without the GPS backpack and with Timothee Chalamet. But anyway, keep going, continue. I
want to hear all of it.
AMY: Okay. So when the birds are chasing after these L.A. pigeons, they actually very rarely catch one. So the point is really more to scare them away to a different area than to pick the pigeons off and kill them. So it’s a lot more humane than using poison or bird spikes; and it’s a lot more cool (let’s face it) than using those tacky fake owl statues you see places.
KIM: Absolutely. We have one of those on our garage, and, you know, I'd rather be doing it this way. So you mentioned when Spencer was in a bad mood, that fact that hawks can actually have moods is one thing that stands out, but it also reminds me a lot of another book that I think you read, also: H is For Hawk, by Helen Macdonald. It’s this amazing memoir from 2015. It’s about how she trained a goshawk while she was in the process of grieving the sudden death of her father. Goshawks are supposed to be notoriously difficult to train, and the one in this book has all kinds of attitude, as I recall. But it’s also quite mythical. Macdonald writes that her hawk is like, “a reptile. A fallen angel. A griffon from the pages of an illuminated bestiary. Something bright and distant, like gold falling through water.” Just reading that again makes me want to re-read H is For Hawk. I love that book.
AMY: Yeah, I love that. “Like gold falling through water.” It’s beautiful. I think Falconry feels very “Athurian legend,” too.
KIM: Yeah.
AMY: if you read The Once and Future King by T.H. White, you’ll get some Middle Ages falconry vibes in there… And then there’s another book that sounds pretty interesting along this same line…. It’s called The Peregrine. It’s a 1967 book by J.A. Baker, which was reissued in 2004 by the New York Review of Books Classics. It’s written in diary format and is something of an autobiography about his obsession with one particular falcon to the point where he almost becomes the bird. He wrote this at a time when peregrine falcons were becoming endangered thanks to the impact of humans. So I have not read this book. I get the sense that it’s pretty dark and intense and philosophical, and the people who love it are a little obsessed with it. Apparently filmmaker Werner Herzog is a fan. He said of the book, “It has prose of the caliber that we have not seen since Joseph Conrad—an ecstasy of a delirious sort of love for what he observes.” Anyway, Kim, as I was reading reviews of this book, I kept thinking it sounded like something you would absolutely love. Have you heard of it? Or read it?
KIM: I have heard of it, and I'm feeling like maybe I read that Helen MacDonald was partially inspired by that for her book as well.
AMY: Yes, she references J.A. Baker in her book, so she brings it up.
KIM: Okay, so that’s where I remember it from. But I also love Werner Herzog. I’ve seen him speak in person a couple of times, at least. And I’m a big fan of his movies, so I need to read this book. I should read this book. I think I would absolutely love it, and I don’t know why I haven’t yet.
AMY: It really sounded like your speed.
KIM: Yeah, it’s going on my list.
AMY: And then getting off on a slight bird-of-prey tangent here, I was also just reading about another book that just came out in November called Chouette by Claire Oshetsky. It’s about a woman who is pregnant, but she reveals to her husband that, oh-by-the-way, the baby is actually half-owl.
KIM: Oh my gosh! I’ve seen the cover of that book! I think I’ve seen it, people publicize it. I had no idea that that was the premise for it.
AMY: Yeah, so apparently the main character who’s pregnant had a romantic interlude with an owl which led to this conception. And then the baby, a daughter, ends up being this sort of wild, predatory bird-baby. Publisher’s Weekly calls it “A Dantean journey through the violent fever dreams of a young woman in the trials of pregnancy and early motherhood…”
KIM: Sign me up. I love it. That sounds amazing. The premise sounds a bit strange, perhaps, but it reminds me a little bit of the plot of Gertrude Trevelyan’s Appius and Virginia (we did a few months ago), where the main character is raising an orangutang… orangutan.. Orangutan as her own child.
KIM: You can’t say “orangutan” and you still can’t say Gertrude.
KIM: I feel like I might have said “Roman a CLEF” at one point in our podcast, and then I heard someone saying [Roman a CLAY] the other day, and I was like, “Wait a second.” Can you say it either way?
AMY: I always thought it was “Roman a CLEF” too, and then Sarah [Raff] from the Aphra Behn episode said, “Roman a CLAY” And I’m like, “What the heck did the ‘F’ go?”
KIM: Okay, thank you. It’s not just me.
AMY: Yeah. News to me. Complete news to me. Okay, so finally, since this is a mini episode, which is where we usually branch out to other topics, I didn’t necessarily think that this was going to actually lead us to a lost lady of literature, but it did, in fact! So I found out that the earliest book about falconry, The Boke of St. Albans, is attributed to a nun named Juliana Berners. (But there’s a big asteriks next to this… there’s a big asteriks...I can’t say asterisk.)
KIM: [laughing]
AMY: But there’s a big asterisk next to this, which I’ll explain in a second. The Boke of St. Albans is a book that was written in 1486 all about gentlemanly pursuits like hunting, fishing and birding as well as things like heraldry. Juliana Berners was apparently a Benedictine prioress at St. Mary of Sopwell near St. Albans. It’s believed she was the daughter of a nobleman, which would explain her love of these country sports that I just mentioned. And it’s really not clear whether she wrote the entire book or if she really only wrote the section on hunting. It’s all a bit nebulous and there’s not a ton of information that can be found out about her, but she was definitely referenced by other medieval writers. And then around the Victorian era, scholars were starting to be skeptical about whether or not she really was the author of The Boke of St. Albans. And it doesn’t help that there are various spellings of her name and that the records have her being part of two different families. It also doesn’t help that the historical records for the priory where she was prioress have a big gap (so the records are basically missing) for the time period she was supposed to have been there. All this adds up to a big mystery that scholars are still trying to get to the bottom of. They think a lot of the Boke of St. Albans may be taken from French works, but they don’t necessarily know what those source books are, so maybe it was something she created entirely. Who knows?
KIM: Okay, you need to run to your nearest bookstore or call them up right now and get Matrix, because there's so much there. The main character in matrix is very androgynous and has some more typically “male” Interests and pursuits. And she came from France to England to run a priory. And there's just so many things in what you just said that also are similar to this book. So,
AMY: She might have known that reference?
KIM: Yeah. It's based on Marie de France, is who she's supposed to be. But there's only so much we know about all of these women, so it's possible she took some of this as well. And I'm going to be looking to see if I can find anything about this in relation to Matrix, but yeah. Great, great, great book.
AMY: Okay. I think my favorite part from The Book of St. Albans, though, is its list of collective nouns. So you know when you think about terms like a “gaggle of geese” or “a murder of crows”? A lot of those come from the Boke of St. Albans. (That’s where it originated from). So it also lists “a tower of giraffes” and “a confusion of wildebeests,” “a bloat of hippos.” So there’s all these different collective nouns that we don’t… I mean, to this day, most of us don’t know what the collective noun is for a group of wildebeests. (A confusion, apparently.) And the book is the most famous source of those collective nouns, and it didn’t just apply to animals. So here are a few others: we have a tabernacle of bakers, a drunkenship of cobblers, a neverthriving of jugglers, a subtlety of sergeants. It’s funny and awesome, and if Juliana Berners did write this, I kind of love her just for that alone.
KIM: I mean, that's amazing. So what did she have to say about falconry? If she wrote this book that is?
AMY: Well, it’s interesting that she’s a proponent of conservation in this book, so she says things like, “take only the birds you need and leave the rest for your neighbors, otherwise you’ll spoil the sport for everyone.” I’m paraphrasing that, but that was not necessarily common wisdom at the time, you know? She also had a list of what ranks were allowed to own certain types of hawks and falcons. So it was all decided by your social standing, whether you got to have a peregrine falcon (it meant you were an earl) or a mere goshawk (which would have been for a yeoman.)
KIM: I mean, what were they teaching us in schools that we didn't get to read this book? I mean, thank god for this podcast, that's all I can say. But anyway, this is all reminding me of the episode we did last year with Lauren Cerand. We were talking about The Green Parrot (you’ll remember this) by Marthe Bibesco, and Lauren mentioned that she had actually been falconing. Do we have that clip?
AMY: Yes, let’s play it right now.
LAUREN CERAND: I went falconry once, and when I was holding the hawk in my hand, I actually understood, completely and wholly, for the first time in my life, that animals are completely different than us; that we anthropomorphize them, that we make up stories about them, that we have relationships with them, but this hawk and I, like, we wanted nothing of the same things.
KIM: Okay, so if we needed any more proof that Lauren is the coolest person on the face of the planet! It’s like she’s from another place and time. Shout out to Lauren; we love her.
AMY: Totally. Actually, I did go see a falconry exhibition, once. I remember when I went to England for the first time, I think I was in Stratford-Upon-Avon — they had some sort of falconer there. It was this blonde girl. I just remember like cute yellow (but dead!) baby chicks in her hand! That was the bait she was using with the hawk.
KIM: Okay. Part of me wanted to say, okay, can we burn calories from doing this? Because I think it is the right workout for me. I think I finally found the thing that I can do. But the dead baby bird part, then that had me go, “not so much.”
AMY: I do want to say I have an idea. Because I looked this up, when Lauren was saying she went falconing once, and it was like, “Who does that? Right?” And I happened to Google it. I don't know if I was looking up the Hawk Proz. I don't know what I was doing. There's all kinds of places in Southern California where we can just go do this. It's a thing. Let’s do it!
KIM: I will absolutely, 100% do it. Sign us up. I will do it. I don't care about the cost. I'll do it.
AMY: All right. So listeners, Kim and I are going to go falconing, let's say sometime in the next year.
KIM: Yeah.
AMY: Between now and Fall of 2022 we’re going to get our butts falconing.
KIM: Yeah. We absolutely are.
AMY: And we'll see if it's actually any sort of workout, which I honestly don't think it is. It's a workout for the bird, Kim. Not you.
KIM: Yeah. Oh, yeah, you’re right.
AMY: Maybe you have to chase after it.
KIM: Yeah, that's true. I'm sure I'll be chasing, chasing: “Come back! Come back!” But no, I definitely wanted to. “Please bond with me!” Okay. Anyway, thank you listeners for putting up with me. That's all for today's podcast.
Join us back here next week, because we're going to be talking all about Gene Stratton Porter, whose classic novel A Girl of the Limberlost features a heroine that's obsessed with another winged creature of the forest. I said “wing-ED.” Did you catch that?
AMY: I caught that.
KIM: Thank you. And best of all: we’ve got one of our all-time favorite guests back again next week. Cultural critic Sadie Stein is returning to discuss this one with us!
AMY: Oh my gosh, who doesn’t love Sadie? So tune in for that, and don’t forget to take a minute to leave us a five-star review where you listen to this podcast.
AMY: It literally takes one-minute! And don’t forget to sign up for our monthly newsletter at lostladiesoflit.com and tell your friends about us on social media!
KIM: Until next week, bye, everybody! Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes.