This morning I took an owl to the Animal Shelter. When I dropped him off, they told me they didn’t do anything for them but waited for someone to pick them up. At 3-4 o’clock this afternoon! This was at 9:00 a.m. this morning. When I called the Wildcare people to tell them I’d dropped him off, they said by Federal Law the animal shelter people can’t help the owl; you have to have a special permit to do that. I hope he makes it.

Yesterday I had to run home at lunch. While there, I let the dogs outside. When I went to bring them back in, Tandi had something and Bugsy was trying to take it away from her. I had to actually go into the yard to make them come into the house. I sent David a text that it looked like Tandi had killed another grackle and he’d need to deal with it before letting them back outside. Yes, I am a total wimp and that IS what men are for; to dispose of dead things in the back yard.

David calls me when he’s home for lunch and says, it wasn’t a grackle and it wasn’t dead. He thought it was an owl. He said he put it outside the fence, under a bush. I called around to see what we could do for the owl but they told me I’d have to have it to the Animal Shelter (which is a long way from anything) by 3:00 to make sure it got picked up that day. I couldn’t make it work.

I had a meeting last night and didn’t make it home until 9:30 or so. When I got home, David told me the owl was still there, except it was trying to get back into our back yard and he’d put it back under the bush. Sure enough it was creeping toward our gate, so we put it back in the bush and I decided if it were still there tomorrow, I’d do something about it.

This morning it was still there. The BoyChild and I checked on it before leaving for school. It was still alive.

As an aside, that sucker must have some kind of death wish.  He, again, was trying to get back into my backyard  with the big, bird eating, dogs.

After I dropped the BoyChild off at school, I went home, donned my husband’s work gloves, found a box and picked that sucker up. He wasn’t much bigger than my two hands put together. Still, I saw The Birds and was a little scared of him. He put up a fight, but didn’t scratch me or anything. I put him in a shoebox and put him into my car. He got the lid off the shoe box and jumped/flew out but then landed on my purse on the floorboard of my car and stayed there for the rest of the trip. We eyed one another suspiciously the whole way.  Me thinking of Alfred Hitchcock. Him thinking of. . .whatever it is birds think of.

The trip was ultimatley  uneventful though when he spread his wings and hopped out of the box, I thought I was going to wreck my car.

The Animal Shelter wasn’t even open when I got there but they let me in anyway.  I left him there.

I got no pictures.  Like I said, I was a little afraid of him.  I can’t really tell you from looking at the pictures on The Owl Pages what kind of owl it was.

I hope they can help him.

Addendum 8/31/2012

I called them the next day. They told me that OwlFred (which was what I’d been calling him) had to be put down. They said he had a skull fracture and his eye socket was ruptured. They said it’s possible the dog’s did it, but there must have been something else wrong with him in order for the dogs to get him.  It made me very sad.  Oh!  He wasn’t an Owl as I thought but instead was a Night Hawk.  R.I.P. OwlFred.