U.S. drug dealer turned master falconer extols ‘healing power’ of wildlife

WASHINGTON, June 6 (Reuters) – Grasp falconer Rodney Stotts has written a guide about his life path from drug seller on the streets of Washington to wildlife skilled, hoping to encourage others to take solace in nature.

“I went from ‘flipping birds’ – promoting cocaine – to flying birds, and the destruction that I used to trigger in that life,” Stotts stated. “I am simply attempting to make up for it.”

In his new memoir “Chicken Brother,” the 51-year-old credit the “therapeutic energy of wildlife” for reworking his life.

As a younger man in one in all Washington’s roughest neighborhoods, Stotts had little to stay for. His father had been murdered, his mom was hooked on crack, and plenty of buddies had been lifeless from gun violence, Stotts wrote.

He anticipated to finish up lifeless or in jail.

However a 1992 initiative to wash up the Anacostia River, led by Hollywood filmmaker and conservationist Bob Nixon, modified the whole lot.

Nixon employed 9 younger helpers from a close-by public housing neighborhood, together with Stotts. For the subsequent a number of years, the drug hustler spent his days wading via soiled river water clearing out trash and studying about birds of prey.

The group helped convey bald eagles again to the town. Over time, Stotts discovered himself drawn extra towards nurturing birds than dealing medication.

“The extra I moved away from it, the happier I appeared to get,” Stotts recalled.

Skeptics had scoffed at Nixon’s determination to rent interior metropolis youths, however Nixon stated Stotts’ story had proved him proper.

“He is precisely the identical. I imply, stuffed with persona, a tremendous, good human being, and I may see that immediately,” Nixon stated about first assembly Stotts within the Nineties.

Changing into a grasp falconer requires passing a state take a look at and discovering a sponsor to study the ins-and-outs of falconry: the ethics of the game; how you can determine, entice and take care of the birds; and how you can launch them again into the wild.

Many potential sponsors didn’t take Stotts critically, he stated.

“I known as this man. He stated, ‘You sound such as you’re a Black man.’ I stated, ‘I’m.’ He stated, ‘Black individuals do not fly birds, y’all eat them,” Stotts recalled.

Finally he discovered a sponsor, and final June earned the designation of “grasp falconer.”

On a latest Might night, the Capital Guardian Youth Problem Academy – a program for younger faculty dropouts – labored to construct an aviary for birds in rehabilitation in Laurel, Maryland.

Thirty years after their first assembly, Stotts and Nixon are passing their data to the subsequent technology.

“I inform individuals, ‘Go to a creek and simply sit and hearken to the water for 10 minutes. Flip your cellphone off, the whole lot,” Stotts stated.

“That previous saying, ‘Cease and odor the roses’? Cease. Really cease and odor them.”

Reporting by Vanessa Johnston; Enhancing by Richard Chang

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