Year of the owl?

While it may not be the Chinese year of the owl, it’s apparently the LWR year of the owl. As of today, LWR has four young barred owls, three young great horneds, an adult barred, and an adult GHO.

The adult barred is a holdover from last week; most of Georgia experienced really nasty weather, followed by several days of high winds, so his planned release was delayed. Gonna try again later today, so fingers crossed!
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The older of the four barreds, the singleton baby, is now perching, wing-flapping and eating on his own. He’s next in line for the raptor flight.

​The other three barreds, the triplets as I’m calling them, are a good bit younger, very vocal and avid eaters. They fell from their nest and given the situation where they fell, we opted not to attempt renesting, for their own safety.

​The adult GHO was pulled from a leg hold trap. Let me just stop right here and make a blanket statement: There’s a special place in hell for the jackasses who use these damnable traps. They’re not humane; they’re not species-specific—a domestic pet or human child is as likely to get caught as the intended prey; and all too often it’s unintended wildlife that gets caught. Such was this poor GHO’s fate. Amazingly, the break in his leg isn’t bad, but the tendons appear to’ve tightened and shortened already, causing the toes to “freeze” in an extended position…so while vet Richie Hatcher and I are very optimistic the fracture will heal, we’re less sanguine about the possibility of regaining use of that foot. Only time will tell. Meanwhile, he’s NOT a happy camper—see the photo below of his box…

​The GHO twins were a transfer from Steve Hicks of Bubba & Friends. These babies are unusually close-knit and non-competitive for food, which Steve had commented on when he transferred, so it was interesting to see the behavior he described for myself. Again, this was a situation where renesting wasn’t possible, and one of the babies appeared to have either a nest injury or an injury from the fall from the nest. Steve sent them to me so I could have the vets at Smalley’s Animal Hospital examine and x-ray the wounded baby’s leg.

​Sadly, when we x-rayed, Richie immediately said this injury, IF it could be repaired, required a specialist. He placed a call to Auburn University’s raptor center, and the vet there who received the emailed x-rays immediately called him back and informed us that this was not a fixable injury; the young GHO needed euthanizing.

​Euthanasia is always hard. It’s worse when we have to euthanize a baby. It’s horrendous when the sibs have a close bond. Given that close bond, I told Richie we’d hold off on euthanizing to give the healthy bird some time to mature and see if any other young GHOs came in so he’d still have a buddy when we euthanized his sib.

​And, amazingly enough, a third downy GHO arrived today, a victim of last week’s storms. He’s younger than the twins but is easily nearly twice their size—and a much more typical hissy, beak-clicking, aggressive eater GHO.

So we’ll give the new baby a couple of days to bond with the other two and then euthanize the injured baby. He’s not in pain at the moment because he’s not attempting to stand yet, so we have a little time to allow for that bonding.

And yes, it’s situations like this that really, truly test your resolve as a rehabber…

Adding to the generally downbeat tenor of the week, yesterday LWR got a message about a fox with a leg hold trap holed up in a drain pipe. I normally require people to bring the wildlife to LWR, and I’m not licensed for rabies vectors like foxes, but I couldn’t in good conscience allow an animal with a damn leg hold trap to go without help.

Upon my arrival at the address, the caller, a neighbor and shortly afterward, the caller’s husband were on scene. The caller and neighbor had placed a humane trap at one end of the app. 20-ft pipe, but we needed to prod the injured fox toward it, so the husband left to bring back some small trees he’d been cleaning up from the week’s storm damage. We lashed them and a length of PVC pipe together and he went to the trap side of the drain while I pushed our cobbled-together prod through the pipe.
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The fox did run out of the pipe into the humane trap but it wasn’t secured on one side, allowing the injured animal to escape, leaving behind the leg hold trap and her foot. Once again, for the record, there’s a special place in hell for the cretins who use these abominations.

The game warden has been notified and will be collecting the trap this week; the homeowners in the subdivision are livid that one of “their” foxes was maimed and will likely die now—and that a trap that could have easily caught one of their dogs or children was callously placed in the woods where both dogs and children play. Meanwhile, all have been told to be on the lookout for the maimed fox so that maybe we can capture her and humanely euthanize rather than having her suffer a slow and painful death in the wild.
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Ending on a less gruesome note, the warbler’s wing was badly broken, as I suspected last week, but Richie agreed with me that given her young age and the fact that her bones are still growing, there may be a chance that she’ll be flight-capable. We opted to give her time to see.

​And the flyers are still enjoying their new digs and are reverting to more truly nocturnal creatures now that they’re mostly self-feeding.