We heard from our friend in Clear Lake about the owl that he and my husband rescued from the fence on Christmas Day..... the owl is resting comfortably at the Nature Center and is on the mend. They've fixed his wing, given him antibiotics, made sure he could eat and drink, and now he's resting and letting his wing heal. When he can fly again, he'll be released. They said it was a "barred owl," and I looked for photos on the Internet.
I think "our" owl was younger than the ones shown on the Internet sites... but the coloring is definitely the same. White and beige with light brown bars of color along the feathers. The most striking was his bright yellow beak, and huge black eyes. Sort of like teddy-bear eyes.... and his feathers were just so soft and silky. I realize that owls aren't the nicest of birds... they attack their prey with a vengeance, grasping them in their talons and dropping them from the sky over and over again to break their bones..... not exactly a nice way to go if you're a small animal, and there's no way to out-run an owl with a three or four-foot wing span.
That being said..... this young owl, having been impaled on a barbed wire fence not far from here, just didn't have a chance of surviving the night-time coyotes who would have definitely taken off with him. A happy ending for this little story..... that owl's Christmas Day began with him being impaled on the fence...... then he spent the afternoon in a box on our porch..... then a two-hour car ride to Clear Lake (and he stayed in the box the whole trip)...... then spent Christmas night wrapped up in that box in J's living room...... managed to get out of the box at four o'clock in the morning to go exploring J's house..... and then began his recovery at the Nature Center that next morning.
Since we moved out here four and a half years ago, I've been saying that there's "a lesson every day." Not even a day of rest on Christmas.
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