…Quietly, at the moment, with absolutely no complaints on this end about that quietude.  A little break is nice!

The screech continues to mend nicely; our next step is to convince him to self-feed. I know he can see, as he’s started peeking out of his box now, signaling the time to move him into a larger (but still indoor) enclosure. Hearing? Not so sure about that, but I’m leaning toward probably not. He seems to respond more to movement than sound.  If he is, in fact, deaf, that seals his fate as an educational bird. Owls of all species hunt more by hearing than sight, so a one-eyed owl can fare very well in the wild. A deaf one cannot.  Fortunately, his laid-back attitude remains intact as he mends, so as long as he maintains this easy-going personality, his future as a wildlife ambassador seems promising. (And yes, his pupil is jagged again in these pix—apparently it’s the flash causing it, as in non-flash pix it’s perfectly smooth. Go figure…never seen that before in any of my photos!)

The barred owl is moving around the flight pen nicely now. I never know what perch he’ll be on, but you can bet I always get the full-on threat display—spread wings, beak clicking, hissing: “Put the mice down and get out, human!” He does appear to be blind in one eye, but when we noticed this at his vet visit on intake, we opted to wait and see if it was a result of recent injuries and cleared up on its own or if it might be from an old injury. Sometimes a cloudy eye will clear as it heals; that this one remains cloudy indicates an old injury or maybe a cataract. Whichever, it’s not impairing the bird’s ability to hunt—and based on his mobility in the flight pen, I’d say that fracture and dislocation that should by all logic have been life-ending is probably going to continue healing to the point of release. Fingers crossed!

Just a reminder that the 2015 LWR calendars are available through Lulu.com (link below) for $16.50 + shipping. US, UK and Canadian holidays are featured, and $5 of each purchase goes toward funding next year’s rehab efforts.  

Also, please remember throughout the upcoming year that whenever you shop at AmazonSmile, Amazon donates 0.5% of the purchase price to Laurens Wildlife Rescue Inc. Bookmark the link http://smile.amazon.com/ch/26-1668846 and support us every time you shop.

And since the next update will be after New Year’s Day…

…a holiday free of injured wildlife. Of course, for LWR that already won’t be the case, as we have the screech recovering from surgery and a barred owl we’re sorta kinda hoping for a miracle on.

Let’s start with the barred owl, as his situation is more quickly explained: He was found on the ground in a local WMA (wildlife management area), apparently unable to fly. A quick parking lot exam revealed swelling at the right elbow that was probably indicative of a fracture.

The next day, an exam and x-rays by vet Richie Hatcher at Smalley’s Animal Hospital confirmed both a fracture and a dislocation. Both showed clear signs of callus formation, so this bird had been injured a while. Either injury by itself wasn’t good; combined, they appeared to be a death sentence. Unlike in Parts North, barred owls are about as common as dirt in Georgia, so educational facilities usually have a full complement and aren’t looking to take on additional barreds.

Richie went for the euthanasia solution, and I walked back into the exam room with vet tech Carma Goodman.  The barred decided to get feisty and flared both his wings as I held him. Carma and I were somewhat surprised to see him flare the injured wing level with the good wing. Hmmm…

Richie came back in and I gently moved my arm up and down to make the barred flare his wings again. Richie’s reaction was the same as ours. Hmmm… He called for vet Jim Hobby to take a look. The barred did it again, powerfully flapping both wings perfectly levelly and in sync.

We all agreed to give him some time in the small flight pen to see what happens. If he can’t fly, we can always euthanize later, but once it’s done, you can’t take it back. So far he’s pretty much glued to one perch, although I know he can and does come down, as the mice I place in there overnight are gone the next morning. We’ll see…fingers crossed for this guy!

Now…if you’ll recall, the news wasn’t promising for Sir Screech last week, with the pupil in his good eye looking all weird and jagged. To my delighted surprise, however, after posting last week’s update I went to feed the little guy, and the eye looked perfectly normal. What the…???

Obviously, he went to the vet with the barred on Monday, where Richie and Jim could find no logical explanation for the smooth-jagged-smooth pupil.  We dunno…Maybe we got that miracle you were all hoping for last week!

But Richie did tell me to bring him back Wednesday morning for his surgery. Remember, we knew we couldn’t save that right eye. It was ruptured; all that could be done was remove it to prevent potentially deadly infection.  This is not something we’d normally do, to be honest.  A bird with that extent of damage would normally be euthanized. We’ve done so in the past and will do so in the future.

So why not euthanize Sir Screech? His calm demeanor would make him an ideal educational bird, and he’d also make a good surrogate parent for screech babies.  None of this is guaranteed, of course. It all depends on how he fares over the next few months. If we see his health is adversely affected or he seems unduly stressed by captivity, we’ll take the necessary action. But right now, we’re seriously leaning toward ed bird. Richie is as amazed as I am at how calm this little guy is and agrees that he’d be an excellent wildlife ambassador.

Sooo…back to the surgery…Wednesday morning, Richie was ready to work and I was ready to document his work with photos. Vet tech Betty Smith assisted Richie with gassing down and entubating our guy, after Richie crafted a makeshift and very serviceable tube when their smallest one was too big for Sir Screech’s airway.

I realize not everybody finds wildlife surgery as fascinating as we rehabbers do, so in the interest of weak stomachs out there, I’ve limited the photos of the surgery below to the less gory stuff. I’m constantly amazed at the skill of my vets, though, and am grateful each time they allow me to observe and document their work. It’s friggin’ awesome!

The damaged eye…

Removing the eye…

Stitching the eye shut…

Waiting for the screech to wake up…

Sitting in Richie’s hand after surgery.

While his appetite was off Wednesday night, it was back to normal Thursday morning and he hasn’t slowed down since. (Sorry the video’s a bit out of focus in spots; apparently screech camouflage affects camera lenses!)

Remember that the 2015 LWR calendars are available through Lulu.com (link below) for $16.50 + shipping. US, UK and Canadian holidays are featured, and $5 of each purchase goes toward funding next year’s rehab efforts. We’re up to nine calendars sold, and while at this point they won’t arrive in time for Christmas giving, everybody needs a good calendar for the New Year, so order yours now!

Also, while you may be done with your online Christmas shopping, please remember throughout the year that when you shop at AmazonSmile, Amazon donates 0.5% of the purchase price to Laurens Wildlife Rescue Inc. Bookmark the link http://smile.amazon.com/ch/26-1668846 and support us every time you shop.

And finally…

Early last week, the screech owl and I trekked back to Smalley’s Animal Hospital to see what could be done about his ruptured eye. There was no way to save the eye; none of us had any illusions about that. But…there was a procedure, which the vets at Smalley’s had never performed, that would considerably lessen the trauma to the screech. Obviously, anything that will be less stressful for the bird is a good option. Vets Richie Hatcher and Peggy Hobby and I discussed it, and they decided to hold off on any action on the screech until they could consult with colleagues who had performed the surgery.

Richie and Peggy observed Sir Screech’s calm demeanor in the exam room, where he sat unrestrained while we discussed his options and ultimate fate, and agreed that he would make an excellent educational bird. I left feeling that at least we had some options now.

However…over the course of the past week, I’ve come to believe there was significant damage to the left eye that’s only now beginning to show. And this is NOT good news for this unusually laid-back little fellow.

He seems unsure exactly where his food is and will often bite hesitantly at air until he finds the forceps, or until I move them closer. This is not cruel teasing; I need to determine if it’s just that his depth perception is off from having only one good eye or if he’s truly having difficulty seeing. What I’ve discovered thus far is that both depth perception and peripheral vision seem off. As long as his food is offered directly in front of his good eye, he can see it. In effect, he seems to have tunnel vision in his good eye.

For an educational bird, this wouldn’t be a problem, as long as he can self-feed from the food provided. But there’s the thorny issue: he doesn’t seem to be able to self-feed. I’ve offered cut-up rodents in a small dish that contrasts with their color, to make it even easier for him to see them, and he refuses to eat them. I don’t think he can see them.

And—and this is probably going to seal his fate—if you’ll look at the two 100% crops of his eyes from one of last week’s photos and one of this week’s photos, you can see marked deterioration in the pupil. See how “clean” the edges are in last week’s image, as opposed to the jagged edges in this week’s image?

How could this happen? Just as sometimes it takes weeks or months for an injured bird to heal to the point that we can seriously consider release as an option, injuries—especially eye or soft tissue injuries—can take time to actually show.

What does this mean for the screech? He’ll be making another trip to Smalley’s this week for further examination, but I suspect it’s not going to be good news.

Remember that the 2015 LWR calendars are available through Lulu.com (link below) for $16.50 + shipping. US, UK and Canadian holidays are featured, and $5 of each purchase goes toward funding next year’s rehab efforts. Thus far, six calendars have been sold. With just $5 of each purchase actually reaching LWR, that’s not enough to place even a small rodent order.

Also, those of you who do your Christmas and other shopping online, please remember that when you shop at AmazonSmile, Amazon donates 0.5% of the purchase price to Laurens Wildlife Rescue Inc. Bookmark the link http://smile.amazon.com/ch/26-1668846 and support us every time you shop. This isn’t just a Christmas promotion; Amazon does this year-round, so keep that link and donate a pittance to LWR every time you shop at Amazon.

I think I’ve seen more owls this year than ever before, and from all of Georgia’s native owl species, too: great horned, barred, screech and barn. (Apparently there have been sightings of saw whets and long- and short-eared owls here during the winter, but I’ve never heard of any in central Georgia.)

What brought on that observation? Well, I released the barred owl Monday and by Thursday had a screech owl…

The barred owl was—pardon the pun—a hoot to release. First, he slammed the box around the back of the car, so I figured I’d have another release where I didn’t manage video and would have to chase him through the woods for photos.

HAH!

Take the box out of the car, set it on the ground, open it, and…Doofus flings himself onto his back and grabs the side of the box with one foot.

Hmmm…

I wait for him to realize the box is open and the sky is above him.

Nope, too busy glaring at me…

*sigh* Put the camera away, glove up, and take Doofus out of the box. Remove one glove to man the camera, open the gloved hand holding his feet and…

Nothing. He sits on the glove, staring around.

Really, Doofus? You’re FREE! Go be an owl now!

So I start moving my hand up and down slowly. He tightens his grip for balance and glares at me. Then I take one step forward, and…

Ground control, we have liftoff!

He soars straight for the treeline—sorry about the blurry bit at the end of the video below. I was trying to zoom in as he landed and both the camera and I lost him.

So I walk over to where I finally spotted him, and snap one photo before he decides he’s having none of that and takes off again, over to the side.

I start in that direction to get a better photo, and he takes off again. This time I lost him. So…a little slow on the uptake, there, but once he had his freedom, having been with me less time than previously released owls, he opted to avoid the paparazzi altogether.

Then Thursday morning, a caller said her son had found a grounded “baby” owl near dark as he was leaving his deer stand. She thought his wing might be broken. This time of year, a “baby” will almost surely be an adult screech owl. Sure enough, when I met the caller, she had an adult gray-phase screech—and he was NOT in good shape. I actually thought he was already dead, as he was huddled against the side of the large bird cage she’d put him in the previous night, one wing sprawled out, head back at an impossible angle.

But no, the little guy was alive—barely, it appeared. I grabbed a small box, eased him into it, and headed for Smalley’s Animal Hospital on the double, not even taking time for a rudimentary preliminary exam. (I’d called earlier to tell them I might be bringing an owl in.) When I got there and asked for fluids to get him started right away, receptionist Jesse Savage immediately brought me an entire small bag of fluids and some syringes. I love the entire staff at Smalley’s; they’re all amazing!

The fluids did help some, but he still seemed to have something neurological going on: he kept his head drawn tightly to one side on his shoulder and his left foot balled up. And he refused to open his eyes.  

Vet Richie Hatcher x-rayed him and there were no fractures, so at least he had that going in his favor. However, his right eye looked to be severely damaged.  Richie recommended that I get him stabilized over the weekend, if possible, and our next steps would depend on how he fared until Monday.

Here he is the morning after intake:

Yesterday:

And this morning:

He's looking toward the feeding forceps in the photos above.

The focus kept fading in and out; sorry. I think I had the camera a bit too close.

Remember that the 2015 LWR calendars are available through Lulu.com (link below) for $16.50 + shipping. US, UK and Canadian holidays are featured, and $5 of each purchase goes toward funding next year’s rehab efforts. Sales are very sluggish right now and quite frankly, if they don’t pick up, this will be the last year I do a calendar. There’s an awful lot of effort involved in putting together the calendars, and selling just five or six of them is just not enough return on that effort—nor does it bring in sufficient funds to make it worthwhile.

Also, those of you who do your Christmas and other shopping online, please remember that when you shop at AmazonSmile, Amazon donates 0.5% of the purchase price to Laurens Wildlife Rescue Inc. Bookmark the link http://smile.amazon.com/ch/26-1668846 and support us every time you shop.