1/2 Photo: Wendy Wijnen
With a loud bang, a buzzard flew straight into the grill of the car of Wendy (50) and Arjan (57) Wijnen on Sunday afternoon. They were on their way to visit family in Vierlingsbeek when the animal flew into the car from the central reservation. While waiting for the animal ambulance, they took care of the animal. “My husband was sitting in the backseat with a buzzard in his arms.”
“We drove on the Rijksweg to Vierlingsbeek, where my mother lives,” Wendy begins to say. They drove in the left lane, near the guardrail. “I think the buzzard was busy with prey there. We saw it flying and heard a loud crash. But we couldn’t immediately stop on the hard shoulder.”
The couple drove on for a while, to the next gas station. “You don’t know what damage you have until you suddenly see that buzzard in your grill.” They saw the bird entwined in the front of their car, with its wings still spread. Arjan wanted to pull the animal out, when it suddenly turned out that it was still alive. “We thought he was dead, but then suddenly he moved.”
“Then my husband sat in the backseat with the buzzard and I continued driving.”
There was blood on his paws, but the animal was still there. “So we put him on the sidewalk and called the animal ambulance. Only it would take an hour before they got here,” says Wendy. Abandoning the bird was really not an option for them. And they were actually only ten minutes away from Wendy’s mother. “Then my husband sat in the backseat with the buzzard and I continued driving,” she says.
The animal was calm: probably still in shock. And although Arjan was warned about the bird’s sharp claws, he held it for an hour. Also at his mother-in-law’s home. “He started to get a bit drowsy there, but we didn’t want to leave him alone. Until the animal ambulance arrived.”
Upon inspection, the buzzard appeared to have escaped unscathed. He was in shock, but physically completely fine. The blood on his paw turned out to still be from his prey. Wendy later discovered that there were even some intestines left in the grill. “He will probably have a headache, but you cannot look into the head of such an animal. In any case, we are very happy that he is still alive.”
The ambulance took the bird to a wildlife shelter in Deursen, where it can recover from the shock.