HAWK GROUNDED AFTER EATING TOO MANY NEIGHBORHOOD CHICKENS

A wild hawk in Virginia grew too fat to fly after she gorged herself on a neighborhood’s free-roaming chickens and spent all her time sleeping in the trees. The adult female red-shouldered hawk was found grounded in a Roanoke driveway and taken to a wildlife hospital, where veterinarians diagnosed her with severe obesity.

Staff at the Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center of Roanoke took the grounded bird in after she was discovered about a mile away from their facility. When they weighed the hawk, she tipped the scales at more than 910 grams, or about two pounds.

“At over 910g in weight, she was too darn fat to fly!” the wildlife center said in a Facebook post, as reported by Dexerto. The staff added that they “couldn’t even palpate her keel due to the heavy layer of fat covering it.”

The mystery of the grounded bird was solved when the person who found her in the driveway asked neighbors if anyone was missing poultry. Multiple neighbors reported that their chickens had been vanishing at an alarming rate.

It turned out the hawk had found an endless, low-effort food source. She would eat an easy meal, go to sleep, and wake up just in time for the neighbors to let the chickens out again.

“This queen was picking off the buffet of easy prey set out before her, eating her fill, and then snoozing in the trees nearby until she was ready to eat again,” the wildlife center said.

It is rare for a wild animal to become obese without human intervention. People on Facebook found the situation amusing, with one commenter noting, “The diagnosis: Fat has sent me,” and another joking that the bird was just putting on her winter feathers.

While a hawk that cannot fly might sound like a punchline, the staff warned that the lack of mobility makes the predator extremely vulnerable on the ground.

The bird is now on a strict weight-loss diet, UPI reported. The wildlife center is urging residents to cover their chicken runs to prevent wild predators from turning backyards into buffets.