So your ex-boo ripped your heart out. This Valentine’s Day, you can — symbolically — return the favor, thanks to a Utah bird conservation group.
In the spirit of Anteros — the Greek god who avenged unrequited love — HawkWatch International will name a rat after anyone you choose (say, a former lover) and feed that rat to one of its “raptor ambassadors.”
The charge for this “Talon-tine’s Day” service is $5 — but, for $15, HawkWatch will send a photo of the rat consumption (gory and non-gory options are available). For $45, they’ll send a video of the moment.
One of those “ambassadors,” a brown-feathered Harris’s Hawk named Stax, was particularly peckish recently as he crunched down on a defrosted feeder mouse.
“He’s one of our best eaters,” educator Renata Vazquez said, as the rodent’s tail stuck out from Stax’s hooked beak.
Stax, whose species is native to semiarid climates like the Sonoran Desert, swallowed the rat in minutes. The last remnants of the rodent protruded from Stax’s chest; Vazquez explained that the bird will keep food in a storage pouch, its crop, and digest it slowly.
It’s the second year of HawkWatch’s promotion, “The One Rat Got Away,” which was inspired by other “anti-Valentine” festivities at animal sanctuaries — like the San Francisco Zoo’s offer a few years ago to let people adopt a cockroach or scorpion in honor of their ex.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Renata Vazquez, an educator with HawkWatch International, holds Kotori the Great Horned Owl, on Tuesday, Jan 28, 2025.
“We view it as a way to release something,” said Sammy Riccio, HawkWatch’s communication manager. “We definitely get people who are like, ‘This was cathartic for me.’”
The names submitted, Riccio said, range from “full government names” of ex-partners to hated calculus teachers. And the submissions often are quite complete.“ They give you all the juicy details,” Riccio said.
Several people have submitted the names of politicians, from “all sides of the aisle” – and those rats are reserved for the aviary’s two bald eagles.
Some HawkWatch staff have also jumped in on the fun. Vazquez said that when she feeds rodents to the raptors, she names them “in my head. … All the time.”
As of last week, the raptor conservatory had received close to 25 donations, Riccio said. As Valentine’s Day nears, the nonprofit expects hundreds of requests to stream in. These donations, she said, can help cover costs of about $11,000 a year to feed the conservatory’s birds.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Banshee the barn owl eats a mouse on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. Banshee is used for HawkWatch International educational outreach.
For squeamish Valentine admirers, HawkWatch offers two “sweeter” promotions: raptor-signed love cards and a private dinner for two with some feathered hosts.
“You provide the venue, we bring the birds and the food,” Riccio said.
While “Talon-tine’s Day” provides a playful avenue for funding annual expenses, Vazquez said the fundraiser also works as an “informal form of education.”
Riccio, who manages the conservation nonprofit’s social media, said the drive has gone “viral” at times on social media, with some Instagram posts last year drawing more than 1,000 likes.
Social posts and the annual Valentine’s fundraiser have driven people to pay attention to HawkWatch’s conservation efforts Riccio said – information that they “wouldn’t stumble upon on their own.”
“As much as people might be interested to hear what I have to say, they want to see the birds,” Riccio said. “That’s what inspires people to care.”
