SHORELINES

16 Shor e l i n e S | 2015 Vol :4 She certainly knows her adopted land from the ground up. While the rest of us shiver in this bleak season and view the cold outdoors as hopeless, Hudson suggests a nature walk. "We'll look for signs of reawakening," says the guide, keenly familiar with 100 miles of trails around the lake. "It's a lesson to look at something that appears to be dead and then see that it's just waiting to burst forward. There's always something going on under rotten logs and rocks in Russell Forest – we find salamanders all year long and toads and frogs, too. You don't need to wait until spring." Perhaps this appreciation of winter is just a rehearsal for Hudson's favorite season. "I get stirred up when springtime comes," she says. "Russell Forest is like Grand Central Station with birds chirping, does with their bellies bursting as they're about to drop fawns, and baby squirrels and young chipmunks scampering all around. It's like a Disney movie out there where you can even see foxes and young turkeys. The excitement that's in our blood is in theirs, too. Even crotchety old groundhogs have a spring in their step." Nature is second nature for Hudson. From childhood forward, she's been at home in open spaces. "I believe my direction was guided from the start," she explains of her early habit of rescuing turtles and chipmunks, raising a pet owl, flipping over logs to see what lurked beneath, and her knack of finding bones, antlers and old shells. "I had outdoorsy parents and four older brothers who loved to hunt. I never had a Barbie. Ever." Some years later, she studied wildlife biology and management at the University of Maryland with a specialty in white-tailed deer and an equal interest in opossums and raptors. As a result, Hudson is a font of trivia. If you ask the right question, that is. "I'm not a very well-rounded person," she admits lightly. "I can rattle all sorts of information about slug reproduction or the litter size of a fox but in other aspects of our world, I can be a bit lacking." Maybe that's why she'd actually never heard of Auburn University when the job offer as assistant director of the Raptor Center came along. "I grew up without football ever being on our TV," she says, adding, "It's a little ironic considering how recognizable I've become during the football season." From late June through December, Hudson and her colleague Andrew Hopkins fly Spirit, a bald eagle, and Nova, a golden, at Jordan-Hare Stadium on the Auburn campus. "We put them through their paces and they receive the majority of their meals in the stadium." The birds, either of which might be tapped to fly during pregame events ("depending on who's got his game face on"), dive and swoop each day in preparation for their star moment. "I joke that we feed them bits of Bulldog, Gator and Elephant but it's actually more like dead rats, mice, chicken and quail. They get the satisfaction that comes with a big meal of a dead animal at the end of a successful flight, right on the 50-yard-line." That meal that moment, is the longest 60 seconds of Hudson's game day. "The bird has a tracking device so I'm not worried about losing him," she says. "But we do not want Centerfold: Photo provided by Auburn university Photogr APhic services — Nova prepares to land after a successful flight during Auburn University's favorite pregame ritual. Above: Hudson also serves as the Russell Lands on Lake Martin naturalist, guiding tours of the Russell Forest and hosting education events at the Naturalist Cabin.

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