If you’ll recall, last week things weren’t looking too promising for LWR’s new flight pen construction. After receiving an outrageously high quote with an unreasonably long completion time from a professional contractor, I sent out pleas to every college and tech school within a 60-mile radius, and…voila! Today construction began on the songbird flight, courtesy of three dedicated Georgia Southern engineering students: Cody Rogers of McDonough, GA; Isaac Baird of Waverly, KY; and Nate Tanner of Richmond Hill, GA. They’re all seniors and members of Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, and they busted their butts today, starting from the ground up and completing most of the work on the songbird flight in a marathon 10-hour construction session, ending just after dark. These young men are talented, personable and—as evidenced by the amount of work they got done in 10 hours—hard workers. Heads-up to potential employers: these young men are worth their weight in gold. A heartfelt THANK YOU to Cody, Isaac and Nate!
L-R: Cody, Isaac, Nate
And another group of engineering students from Southern has expressed an interest in volunteering next weekend. This isn’t confirmed yet, but it’s looking promising. Mercer’s Student Affairs adviser also seems to think some of that college’s students might be interested, so…fingers crossed!
The screech owl with issues, well, still has issues. She still steadfastly refuses to self-feed, which isn’t boding well for her future. Nothing piques her interest, and the only way I can get food in her is to force-feed, which isn’t pleasant for either of us—to say nothing of the added stress it causes her. I’ve held off making any final decisions until after her follow-up worming, which was last night, but I’m not hopeful, quite frankly. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we have to make tough calls. This looks like it’s gonna be one of those tough calls.
Late Thursday night, a call came in about another screech owl, found in the road in a neighboring county. Because the weather was predicted to be really nasty Friday, we opted to meet Thursday night. Upon intake this little screech, a male, was feisty when handled but obviously concussed, and the misshapen left pupil was worrisome. It looked as if he might have a luxated lens which, if you’ll recall, is when the lens is actually ripped loose from its “mooring” within the eyeball. There were no other injuries, though.
The screech owl with issues, well, still has issues. She still steadfastly refuses to self-feed, which isn’t boding well for her future. Nothing piques her interest, and the only way I can get food in her is to force-feed, which isn’t pleasant for either of us—to say nothing of the added stress it causes her. I’ve held off making any final decisions until after her follow-up worming, which was last night, but I’m not hopeful, quite frankly. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we have to make tough calls. This looks like it’s gonna be one of those tough calls.
Late Thursday night, a call came in about another screech owl, found in the road in a neighboring county. Because the weather was predicted to be really nasty Friday, we opted to meet Thursday night. Upon intake this little screech, a male, was feisty when handled but obviously concussed, and the misshapen left pupil was worrisome. It looked as if he might have a luxated lens which, if you’ll recall, is when the lens is actually ripped loose from its “mooring” within the eyeball. There were no other injuries, though.
By Friday morning the pupil looked better, and little Mr. I’ll-kick-your-butt had eaten everything I’d offered him the previous night. Because he probably has a mate, possibly already on the nest, time is of the essence here, but the eye still didn’t look quite right…
This morning when I went to change his paper and feed him, the eye looked normal and, as you can see in the short clips below, he was in rare fightin’ form, so I’ll be calling his rescuers tomorrow to get him back out in the wild and hopefully reunited with his mate. If we’re very lucky, she wasn’t on the nest yet!
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