short-eared owls

 

I don’t like breaking the law; raising owls in a private residence without proper permits is against the law. Game wardens almost never catch an eagle poacher red-handed, but a biologist without a federal animal rehabilitation license is an easy target.  When I am presented with an injured bird, I weigh the possibility of an arrest or fine or taking a chance to be kind.  When two neighbor farmers, while haying, each ran over a short-ear owl’s nest and found these injured nestlings, I took a risk.  I have loved raising all sorts of wildlife in my home from squirrels, snakes, spiders, silkworms, and cecropia moths to chipmunks,  tropical fish, lizards,  toads, rabbits, and mudpuppies. So the owlets found their home in our rented summer home in Solen.

 

I phoned the North Dakota Game and Fish Department to ask for permission. They said, “Katherine, you are the owls’ best friend in North Dakota, go ahead and take care of them.” It wasn’t legal, but I felt better about this daunting task.

 

We cleared out the unused bedroom, draping old carpeting over the furniture. Archimedes, the larger of the two owls, had suffered a large gash on his shoulder; Merlin, who came from another nest had half of his wing cut by the tractor blade.  I put antibiotic cream on both injuries and proceeded to find food to feed these nestlings who shortly bonded to one another rather than to me, which was important.

 

I set mouse traps around the farmhouse. Nearby neighbor boys followed their dads’ tractor with a bats in their hands, whacking the little rodents that appeared as the hay was being harvested.  At the end of the day, I had a whole bucket full of voles, field mice, shrews, and other unidentifiable critters.  

 

I froze the extra rodents to thaw later for Merlin and Archimedes’ meals in a white plastic bag in our freezer, along with bags of cinnamon buns I made. When Ray or the children wanted a snack, reaching in the freezer, they never knew if they’d find sticky buns or dead voles and shrews. 

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Late one evening a neighbor brought me a deceased rabbit.  I asked how it died.

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“A buck kicked it,” Kenton said.   I tried to imagine a deer kicking a rabbit. It turns out a buck is also a male rabbit. Apparently, his two pets had a fight.  I got the loser.

 

Another night, Conan brought a prairie dog he had shot.  I decided to cut it up, as it was too large for my owls. I went outside where it was pretty dark, and I spread the prairie dog on my cutting board, paws outstretched. I held its left paw as I tried to cut the arm off at the shoulder joint, but just as my knife got halfway down, it must have hit a tendon and the paw jerked up, as the long claws reached over and CLAWED ME! I screamed. It was the first time I had been attacked by a dead prairie dog.

 

But I needed to wean Archimedes and Merlin off dead rodents. I looked for a live mouse so they would learn to catch and eat one when they recovered and were released. That day I introduced the first mouse, putting it in a gift box on the floor. After a while, Merlin hopped over and tried to put his head into the box, but his face was too big, so I took the young mouse out and put it in a brownie pan.   Archimedes then flew over and held onto the edge of the pan and crooked his head this way and that staring at the live mouse running around and around the pan. Finally, he tentatively reached over and grabbed at him. The mouse squealed loudly and the owl was so surprised, he dropped it and flapped to the other side of the room! Archimedes had never heard the sound of a live mouse and it almost scared him to death. 

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The end of the summer was approaching and our departure was imminent. It was time to release my tenants. There had been few mice around our home and I suspect that the owlettes had learned to hunt for themselves.  I took both birds outside. Archimedes looked around and walked a few steps, and then six-foot wings outstretched, he took off!! that scurried around our house, and I released him. Merlin, however, with part of his wing cut, could not fly and so he was given a new home in the Bismarck zoo. Those had to be some of the happiest weeks I ever had.