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Published Tuesday, January 31, 2012 in Opinion

Falcon inside store saved

My husband and I were shopping in Walmart on the evening of Jan. 23. Entering the store my husband looked up and said there goes a peregrine falcon. I said "what?" He told me to look up and watch. Sure enough I saw a large bird go flying by.

As we walked around the store in search of the bird, there it sat perched above the electronics department in the metal beams. It only paused a second and off it went again.

We asked the ladies working in that department if anyone was trying to catch the bird and told them what it was. We were not sure if it was still on the endangered list, but being a bird of prey we knew that it was a protected bird.

We asked a manager in the store about their plan to capture the bird and release it. We were told that upper management knew about the bird and not sure what was being done.

I could not let it go at that, so I called the corporate office in Arkansas. Tiffany took the information along with my name and phone number. She said I could call back and check the status of the case. I begged her to not wait while the paper trail went cold in the works.

I explained that something needed to be done now or the bird would die after getting stressed with it being in the store all day.

Late this afternoon, I received a call from our local store. It was Matt telling me they hired an outside group to come in to capture the bird to release it. They told him they were glad that he did because it is fine of $10,000 and possibly a six month stay in jail if they tried to capture it or killed it.

They brought in a cage with a live bird in it to entice the falcon to have a meal. The falcon eventually went to the cage and was so enthralled with the live bird that the man was able to capture him without any problems.

I was glad Walmart took action quickly before something happened to the falcon. Sometimes large corporations do care. Thank you Walmart.

The Peregrine Falcon was removed from the U.S. Endangered Species list on Aug. 25, 1999.

Patsy Kenney

Newnan