Give up drugs by raising falcons

Rodney Stotts, a former drug dealer on the streets of Washington (USA), has become a master falcon trainer – Photo: REUTERS

Scotts’ childhood was indeed a nightmare, as he grew up in a neighborhood fraught with hardship as well as an environment full of gun violence.

Scott said his father was murdered, and his mother was addicted to gambling. Friends are not better, when many people die at a very young age because of guns.

That all changed in 1992, when Hollywood filmmaker and American conservationist Robert Henry Nixon started a project to recruit young people in the community where Stotts lived to clean up the Anacostia River, as well as restore restore the falcon population in this river.

Nixon recruited nine young people from this community, including Stotts. And from here, the story of the young Stotts gradually turned to a new page, when cleaning up the Anacostia River gave him the opportunity to help these birds, as well as learn about birds of prey.

According to Reuters news agency, the time Stotts spent with and cared for birds made him focus, away from drugs.

Indeed, Stotts himself admits: “The falcons saved my bad life, and made sense. The further away from drugs, the happier I feel.”

This salvation made Stotts determined to become a professional falconer.

When getting started, Stotts struggled to find an expert falconry instructor, which was the foundation for him to pass the state test for ethics content, Reuters reports. ethics, how to care for birds as well as how to release them back into the wild.

Stotts eventually succeeded in finding someone to support him intellectually and then became a master falconer.

In a book titled Bird Brotherthe 51-year-old also wrote: “Animals have the power to heal and have changed my life”.