The young red-tailed hawk slowly soars above the grassy shoulder along I-69 near Fort Wayne, riding the invisible thermal on powerful wings. As she circles, she dips her wings ever so slightly to one side.  From the interstate 100 feet below, it looks as if she is simply enjoying the everyday magic that is flight. But looks can be deceiving. She's hunting.  The unsuspecting mouse scurrying through the knee-high grass has no idea she's got him in her sights.  The term "hawk-eyed" means having keen sight and this hawk's amber eyes are perfectly designed to find and focus on the movement of the mouse, which is no larger than a grown man's thumb.  Hawk-eyed can also mean "vigilant, watchful or observant," and she must be that too.

The hawk starts to circle with greater purpose, spiraling closer to her prey. She senses success and still the mouse doesn't know he's in danger.  She angles her wings back toward her brown tail, which marks her as a juvenile, and dives with an expertise that belies her youth. She's moving at 100 miles per hour and the mouse hears the wind in her feathers before he sees her shadow above him. He runs toward the overgrown fence line that separates the grassy shoulder from the cornfield beyond.  The attempt at escape is no surprise to the hunter; in a split second, the hawk alters her course and descends into a final dive toward the mouse as he enters the relative safety of the brush. Suddenly, the hawk is ripped from the air inches above the mouse as she becomes ensnared in the remains of a barbed wire fence. She wrenches herself free and takes to the air. But she is terrified, disoriented and hurting.

We don't know if this is how the young red-tailed hawk, who was christened Ruby when she joined the Soarin' Hawk family in 2008, was injured. But it is not an unlikely scenario. The sleek bodies of all raptors are designed to penetrate overgrowth to reach their prey, and encounters like the one we've imagined for Ruby are among the most common types of injuries for birds of prey. Ruby, though, was among the fortunate ones. She was rescued. An obvious injury to her crop  - an enlarged portion of the esophagus that is the first step in digesting food - required several surgeries. While the surgeries were successful, it became clear during her recovery that her vision had been damaged too. She could still fly, but she could not survive in the wild without those hawk eyes. She became one of Soarin' Hawk's education birds.

Ruby is one of the most mild-mannered of Soarin' Hawk's raptor residents. She spreads her wings, points her beak into the wind, and makes wonderfully curious hawk sounds when she is tethered at hand. She is sweet and inquisitive and that makes her an ideal bird for educational outreach, which is a critical part of Soarin' Hawk's mission. Ruby meets as many as 600 children a year at Soarin' Hawk presentations, and each time we tell her story, we hope to teach the importance of compassion toward all living things.  Her story also exemplifies how giving back has immeasurable rewards for both the rescuer and the rescued.