Thousands Of Cars No Match For Red-Tailed Hawk

Traffic on I-95 was “snarled” this morning, preventing thousands of people in this car city from getting to their Stephen Starr restaurants on time.

Anyway, traffic was backed up because there was a red-tailed hawk in the left lane near the Academy Road exit, which is also near where I grew up. Coincidence? Uh, yes, of course. The bird backed up traffic on both sides for about an hour, largely because of gaper delays. But despite everyone slowly driving by the hawk at 10 miles per hour, nobody knew what the hell it was.

A radio report mentioned it might be an osprey. Or it could have been an owl, said a representative of the Philadelphia Animal Care and Control Association.

It looked like one, according to Inquirer Inqlings columnist Michael Klein, who was driving by.

But New Jersey editor Kurt Heine was fairly certain: “It was a red-tailed hawk,” he said. “This was a brown and white bird, a big raptor.”

What did I say before about taking breaking news media reports with a grain of salt? Yeah, that. I think the real question is, what the hell kind of owls do we have in this city if they can be confused for hawks? Will we one day be under siege from giant owls with the wingspans of small trucks? Hopefully, because then Steven Seagal could save us, and if I remember correctly from sixth grade there’s nudity in that movie, too.

It was a hawk that snarled I-95 this morning [Inquirer]