short-eared owls

 

The summer I cared for injured owlets stands out as it was most likely my favorite three months in North Dakota. When two neighboring farmers each found injured nestlings after running over short-eared owl’s nests while they were out cutting hay, they brought them to me. I had always loved raising all sorts of wildlife in my home. Over the years, this included squirrels, snakes, spiders, silkworms, cecropia moths, chipmunks, tropical fish, lizards, toads, rabbits, and mudpuppies, so I was thrilled when I had a chance to rehabilitate the owlets by offering them a temporary hospital and sanctuary in our rented summer home in Solen, North Dakota.

 

Taking care of these little owls proved to be a daunting task. We cleared out our unused bedroom and draped old carpeting over the furniture. Archimedes, the larger of the two owls, had suffered a large gash on his shoulder. Merlin, who came from the other nest, had half of his wing cut by the tractor blade. I put antibiotic cream on both injuries, and proceeded to find some owl food for them. Thankfully, the two shortly bonded to one another, rather than to me, which was important.

 

To gather food, I set mousetraps around the farmhouse. I also got help from nearby neighbor boys who followed their dads’ tractors with baseball bats in their hands, whacking whatever little rodents appeared as their dads harvested hay. 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 in a white plastic bag in our freezer, to thaw later for Merlin’s and Archimedes’ meals. They joined bags of frozen homemade cinnamon buns. When my husband or the children wanted a snack, and headed into the freezer, they never knew if they’d find sticky buns, or dead voles and shrews. 

 

Late one evening, a neighbor brought me a dead rabbit. I asked how it died. “A buck kicked it,” he said. I tried to imagine a deer kicking a rabbit and struggled to picture it. It turns out that a male rabbit is also called a buck. Apparently, my neighbor’s two pets had had a fight. I got the loser.

 

Another night, a different friend brought over a prairie dog he had shot. I decided to cut it up, as it was too large for me to feed it whole to 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. The paw jerked up, and the long claws reached over and CLAWED ME! I screamed. It was the first time I was attacked by a dead prairie dog. It was also the last.

 

Eventually, it was time to wean Archimedes and Merlin off dead rodents, and teach them to hunt. I looked for a live mouse. The owls needed to be able to catch and eat their prey when they were released. 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. I took the young mouse out of the box 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 in the pan. Finally, he tentatively reached over and grabbed the tiny rodent. The mouse squealed loudly. Archimedes was so surprised that he dropped it and flapped to the other side of the room. Archimedes had never heard the sound of a live mouse before. It almost scared him to death. 

 

From across the room, Archimedes sat looking at the mouse running around and around in the brownie pan, twisting his head this way and that, trying to decide whether or not he was brave enough to attack it. After five minutes or so, he flew over, grabbed it, held it as it squeaked, and ate it — head first. Interestingly, after that day, we never found mice in the traps. Our owls learned how to get mice on their own without my help and without the brownie pan!! Merlin must have learned from his friend, because sometimes when I set out dead mice, the two neglected to eat them. I guess they were full from fresh mice!

 

The end of the summer approached, and with it, we would be heading back home to Annapolis. It was time to release my charges. When the time came, I took both birds outside. Archimedes looked around, walked a few steps, and then, with his six-foot wings outstretched, he took off into the blue North Dakota sky. I never saw him again. Merlin, because of his injured wing, could not fly. Thankfully, he was given a new home in the Bismarck Zoo. 

 

Both owls survived their run-ins with the tractors, healed, and thrived. Driving away from our summer home in that wild landscape, I let out a deep sigh of relief, and I smiled. My effort to help these beautiful creatures to survive had been successful.