A HEART TO THE HAWKS

It's 1946. A year when Angeline Karman is thrilled by Photoplay's ""sensitive"" coverage of Elizabeth Taylor and her pet chipmunk, and boy physicist ""Toad"" Corcoran wears a ""duck's ass"" haircut and discovers a new preoccupation with anatomy (""I work in my lab and I look at an Erlenmeyer flask, and you know what I think about? -- knockers, that's what""). But for Mike Harrington -- who's still so dedicated to science that he bungles a chance to make out with Angeline in order to bag a rare specimen of siren salamander -- 1946 means the coming of bulldozers to destroy the ever fascinating woods that border his family home on the outskirts of Cleveland. This then is an ecological tragedy that's been played before, but never so well. The difference lies in the depth of Mike's commitment, both intellectual and emotional, to the land he wants to save. When Mike declares war on the bulldozers he researches zoning laws and the form business letters with the same energy he has applied to memorizing Latin names, collecting specimens and reading animal books. And his dedication to birds is proved in a day and night struggle to tame a captured red-tailed hawk which becomes his hunting companion and the only thing he truly loves. Mike's tolerant, close-knit family worries about his attraction to ""things that eat other things,"" but he is an eminently sane fanatic -- at least until his hawk is electrocuted by a newly installed power line and he enlists Corcoran in a last ditch plan to blow up a bulldozer and nearly kills himself. It would be a shame if Angeline's empty-headedness puts today's girls off; Mike's passionate involvement with nature and life itself is an experience for everyone, and remarkable enough in any year.