Hawks and Hounds: Inside the weird and wonderful world of Wimbledon’s working animals
Written by ABC Audio All Rights Reserved on July 13, 2024
(LONDON) — Meandering within the manicured lawns and historic courts of Wimbledon are Rufus and Flo, a couple who are incredibly popular with players and fans alike, yet simultaneously unassuming and vital workers whose sole function is to keep the public safe and the tennis uninterrupted.
With a combined 20 years of experience working at Wimbledon, they know exactly what they are doing when they start work each day of the two-week tournament in southwest London: Rufus watches the skies while Flo keeps an eye on the grounds.
The biggest difference about Rufus and Flo, compared to most of the other employees at Wimbledon, is that Rufus is a 16-year-old hawk and Flo is a 4-year-old Labrador Retriever.
Rufus, famous in his own right with over 5,000 followers on Instagram and has also been called “the world’s most notable bird” and “one of Britain’s best-known birds” in the media, has a singular responsibility — keep Wimbledon clear of pigeons at all costs.
“Rufus is ‘Chief Pigeon Deterrent’ here at Wimbledon,” Donna Davis told ABC News while standing on Centre Court on the middle Sunday of the 2024 Championships. “Often the pigeons can go up in the rafters and then sneak around and build little nests. They generally have a really comfortable time up there and then come down when the grass seed has been laid to munch on the seed. It’s like caviar to them. Rufus is here to stop all of that.”
Davis shares a unique bond with Rufus that is built on trust as well as her keen understanding of avian behavior and Rufus’ training relies heavily on food motivation.
“We build up that loyalty and trust, ensuring I always have food for him,” says Davis. “He even does what I call his ‘Wimbledon wiggle’ — which is when he shakes his tail before he flies off.”
Though essentially a wild bird, Rufus is trained to return to Davis, seeing her as his most reliable food source. Davis also makes sure to maintain Rufus at the right weight, something that is crucial to their relationship and ensures that he finds returning to Davis more appealing than expending energy hunting for his own meals.
Davis has worked at Wimbledon now with Rufus and his predecessor, Hamish, for 24 years this year but her career at the All England Club all began because she saw a solution to a massive problem that she noticed while watching the 1999 Wimbledon men’s semifinal between Pete Sampras and Tim Henman.
“During that match, the pigeons kept coming down to Centre Court in between points to munch on the seed that had been laid and Sampras kept having to bat them off the baseline with his racquet,” Davis told ABC News. “And of course at that critical point, if you’re getting distracted, that’s the last thing you need, and it can cost you the game or the match. So I was watching and I was thinking, ‘I’m going to give them a call.’ I did exactly that and they said, ‘come down, show us what you can do’ and here we are, 24 years later.”
Meanwhile, Flo, the 4-year-old Labrador Retriever, has a complimentary — but no less important — role to Rufus as she patrols the grounds to keep the perimeter of the 42-acre complex secure and the more than half-a-million people who come to Wimbledon each year safe.
Training a dog like Flo for her specific role is an intensive process, her owner and handler Mark Millsand told ABC News.
Her handler explains that it typically takes about ten weeks of intensive, but relatively quick, training to get dogs like Flo up to speed with the kind of work they are doing, the process designed to ensure that the dogs are sufficiently prepared for their roles — much like passing a driving test but gaining proficiency through experience.
Flo’s working day at Wimbledon is long and demanding. Spanning around 12 intense working hours. Millsand ensures she gets regular breaks to prevent overheating and he says that keeping her alert and ready to respond at a moment’s notice is crucial, especially if a sudden search operation is required.
However, Flo does have plenty of opportunities to interact with the public on their walks and she has quickly become a favorite among visitors.
“We have a lot of returning visitors here every year,” said Millsand. ”They seem to remember the dogs. They get a glazed recollection of our faces and then they think, Oh, I remember Flo.”
Flo might be a working dog with an intense focus on her daily duties but she can’t pull a fast one on Millsand, who is more than just her handler because Flo is a family dog, a pet first and foremost.
“She is absolutely not this well behaved all of the time,” Millsand joked. “Unfortunately, she is very fond of strawberries, which means this is the wrong environment for her to be in with Wimbledon’s strawberries and cream. If she sees people eating strawberries, she can get very friendly.”
Not to be outdone by Rufus, even though Flo doesn’t have an Instagram account, she has had plenty of brushes with fame herself and got to meet Her Majesty Queen Camilla at The Championships last year.
Each of them also, notably, have side hustles. Flo will patrol football matches and sets of television shows while Rufus can be seen high above the skies in central London keeping Westminster Abbey free from pesky pigeons.
Historically, animals have been present at Wimbledon, acting as vital employees since before the tournament was founded in 1877. In the early years of the tournament, ponies and horses were used to level the surface of the grass to a pristine standard by pulling a large roller, even wearing leather boots so as not to trample the freshly smooth surface or damage the grass.
But not all creatures have been so warmly welcomed at Wimbledon over the years, like back in 1982 when a swarm of bees in disrupted the second set of the third round match between Americans Pam Shriver and Kathy Rinaldi, engulfing both of them. Rinaldi was stung on the arm and Shriver, quite considerately, removed the sting.
Over the years, Wimbledon has also had interruptions by squirrels — in 1949 during the match between Hans van Swol of the Netherlands and Frenchman Bobby Abdesselam — sparrows, during the 1989 men’s semifinal between Stefan Edberg and John McEnroe, and — in the days before Rufus and Hamish — a mouse even interrupted play during the 1998 first round matchup between Yevgeny Kafelnikov and Mark Philippoussis.
For now, Rufus and Flo work in tandem, steadfast guardians of this tournament, making sure the competition can unfold as seamlessly as possible.
Their teamwork, however, involves a great irony. Rufus and Flo do not get along. At all.
“Rufus and the search dogs are not friends,” laughed Millsand. “I think it’s a healthy awareness of each other, but Flo wouldn’t stand a chance against Rufus even though she thinks she does, but she wouldn’t. I’d love to go over and talk to Donna Davis and have a chat with her about Rufus but we just can’t get close enough.”
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