Hunting with Mike

My brother-in-law Pat called me down to his house a couple evenings ago to get my advice on this “Great Horned Owl” sitting in his back yard. The chances of getting very close to one of these “night stalkers” is pretty slim. They do their hunting at night and only on rare occasions seen by humans.

Pat knew something was wrong with this owl, as it didn’t move when he approached. I got within a few feet of it, trying to see if there were any visible wounds. None to be seen, but the birds huge night vision eyes followed my every move, even though he made no attempt to move. Definitely not normal! We theorized he might of been jabbed by a sharp limb from the scrub oak he was under, or had a broken wing, and we didn’t want to further the injury by trying to put a net over him. We figured the best thing would be to call animal control. After calling the police, the Dept. of Natural Resources, and animal control, we finally got the number of a private citizen who was a licensed rehabilitator.

She came for the owl the next afternoon, and he hadn’t moved 3 foot from where he was. She gently put a cover over the bird, and picked him up without incident. Her guess was “West Nile Virus!” She said she had seen many cases of it this year, but would need to do some blood work to confirm it. She was going to give the bird some liquids as he was dehydrated, and she assured us that she would give us an update as she investigated this beautiful owl’s plight. We are all hoping for a good prognosis, so he can return to the wilds, and do what he does best “HUNT!”

Mike

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.