Irv's Raptor Roost

On one of his trips to visit me in Yellowstone last summer, Irv went exploring at Lake Hebgen while I was at work one day.

He came across this raptor roost that had a family of hawks living in it.

He captured some truly magnificent shots of one of the parents bringing dinner home.

It gave him the idea that maybe he'd like to have a raptor roost of his own in our pasture.  You might be wondering what kind of raptors we have on the high plains of Colorado.  We have hawks and falcons, and occasionally a bald eagle will stop by for a visit.

He did his research and began to build his roost.  Building the platform was by far the easiest part of the project.

Of course he needed a very tall pole to mount the platform on.  He managed to get a free one from our local electric cooperative.  They even loaded it onto the trailer, but he couldn't convince them to come plant it in the ground.

He brought his pole home and cut it to the proper length.

The platform was mounted on top.

The two V-shaped arms are meant to simulate tree branches.

Then it was ready to be moved into the pasture.

If you're going to have a tall pole in your pasture, it requires a deep hole.

This is no easy feat considering how rock hard our soil is.

Little by little he worked on it until he thought it was deep enough.

Then he was faced with the biggest challenge...how to get the pole upright in the hole.  Tying a rope to the pole and pulling with the truck just caused the pole to be dragged forward.  The pole laid on the ground for months.  I had hoped that when our sons-in-law came for Shiloh's graduation in May that they would be able to help, but a late season blizzard put an end to that thought.

Yesterday Irv went out to fiddle with it again and I told him I would come out to help and maybe we could figure out a plan.  Little by little we jacked it up so that we could angle it into the hole.

If you've never had an up close and personal encounter with a telephone pole, let me tell you--they're extremely heavy, probably a few hundred pounds.  I was sure that one of us was going to get crushed.

When it got up higher we decided that we needed something quite sturdy to keep it from falling.  By this time we had invested a couple hours into this process and we didn't want to lose the momentum.  Plus we wanted to keep ourselves safe, as you can see Irv is right underneath it.  One of our steel horse panels worked perfectly.

It was time to give it a try.  Irv got in the truck and pulled while I held onto the ground rope to keep the pole from going off to the side since the wind was blowing.  (Irv actually thought I could keep that pole from going where it wanted to go.)
 

I really wish I had video of the process of up righting the pole.  It was terrifying.  Irv gave it a good pull and all the sudden it starting falling into the hole and then much to my dismay it starting going all the way over to the other side where the truck was.  All I could envision was that pole landing on top of the truck and smashing the cab with my beloved husband inside.  (How would be explain that to the insurance company?)  There was a lot of screaming coming out of me and Irv even admitted there may have been some screaming inside the truck.

Luckily, it stopped before going too far forward.  Irv moved the truck to the other side of the pole and used the ground rope I'd been hanging onto to pull it up straight.  By this time the horses decided to come see what was going on.

When it was straight enough Irv filled in the hole to make it stable.

It seems to be quite sturdy, but we'll see how it holds up during our high wind days this winter.

Project completed!  (Now to figure out how to get those ropes untied from the top of the pole.)  

We're ready raptors...come build your nest!

Please leave me a comment.  Thank you!