WTF?

Its 95 effin degrees, Im stacking firewood, and splitting some of the bigger chunks (Thats right, I now buy my firewood, fuck that Paul Bunyon attitude)..

I see some relief coming in from Indy by Sunday

I miss going out, cranking up the chainsaw, and ripping into dead oak trees.

Then swinging the Bunyon Axe and stacking the wook into cords. Many cords have I cut & stacked!! Many cords, indeed!!

Hard work is fun if it's something you want to do


Get a load of this: One time I fell a dead oak, and then cut it into lengths. What I didn't realize is there was an Owl's nest at the top of the tree, with 3 little baby Owl's. They were newly hatched with the fluffy down coat (no feathers yet). But I didn't even know they were little birds as I was cutting the tree into lengths because as they laid on the ground, they looked like little balls of fluff, maybe a part of an old nest or something.

Those little fluffy balls never moved as I cut the tree up, and I was moving around with my Bunyon Boots less than an inch from them all the time.....but because I figured those fluff balls were part of an old nest, I intentionally made sure I didn't step on them.

Anyway, after I was done cutting the tree into lengths.....ONE OF THE FLUFFY BALLS MOVED!!!!!!!!!

Whoa!!!!!!

That freaked me out. So I bent down to take a close look.....and that's when I saw a little fluffy Owl face looking back at me.

Unbelievable.

It turns out all three Owls survived that ordeal. Birds of prey are tough. At any time I could have stepped on them, but I didn't

So I took them home and bought a bird cage. I fed them for 3 months.....mostly worms and insects. They grew fast....and they grew FAT

They looked really healthy

I'll always remember when they first began to fly. Each day I would take them out of their cage and let them stand on the floor. They would stretch and flap their wings. Then one day they took flight!!!! They would fly around the house and perch on a picture frame or something. They NEVER took their eyes of me, because I was their Mom

Then the day came when I knew I had to let them go, so I called the Arizona Fish and Game, and they came and picked them up. The guy said they would be trained to hunt for themselves, and then be released to the wild.

I knew that it was illegal to keep birds of prey as pets, so I told the guy that I found them along side the road in their bird cage

It turns out they were a rare breed



And I gave them names, too:

Hoot
Who
Whom



Hoot was the strongest of the three. He was hootin' and hollerin' and loved to fly all over the place, so I named him Hoot.
Who was the weakest of the three, and I wasn't sure if he was going to survive at first....but he rebounded nicely. But at first, he was boo-hooin', so I named him Who.
Whom was the quiet one.....he didn't fly much, but instead he liked to find a place to perch and watch all the action. He was "happy in his own skin"......therefore, I named him Whom because "Whom is whom he is".



That entire experience is one of my favorites. That was awesome.

Some of the owls here in Tucson are so big, they could probably carry your 60 pound dog off into the night. Freaking huge....between 2 and 3 feet tall with a massive wing span.

Earlier this year I watched one of the big ones attack a smaller bird while it was sleeping.....that little bird screamed at the top of his lungs for a few seconds, then there was silence. Then the owl carried him off into the darkness. It was actually disturbing to watch.

The Laws of Nature are brutal



By the way, "Whom" is pronounced "Whoom". I wonder if I should have kept those birds as pets.....

Where was momma bird when ripping into that tree?

What type of rare owl were they?

Thats a cool story Mighty C..........

We have Screech Owls all over the place, plus I hear Barn Owl also out there in the jungle.

Now this is tree stacking weather..Its nipply out there.

Momma Owl must have been watching the whole time, but there wasn't anything she could do about it. Obviously, if I had known that a Momma had her kids up in that tree, I wouldn't have cut it down. But little did she know that her kids would be well cared for, looking fat and happy, and then returning Home in just a few months!!

I forgot what breed he said they were.....but he did mention they were an endangered species.

They were very gentle, not aggressive at all. Each time I would walk up to one of them while they were perching on a picture frame or on top of the book shelf, I would hold out my finger next to them, and they would extend one of their feet and grab hold of my finger...and then I'd walk around with an owl perched on my finger

I would even give them a bath in the sink. I would put about an inch of water in the sink and have them sit in it. They would squat down in the water and shake their entire body, kicking up the water to get their feathers wet. They loved taking baths. Then I'd let them sit on the floor next to their cage, and they would flap their wings to help dry their feathers.....then they'd start flying around again

Plus they were clean....they didn't crap all over the place. They only crapped in their cage


I also think that it's a VERY good thing there weren't any pet mice in the house

When I turned them over to Fish and Game, they were a bit smaller than that (still just kids), but the owl in that picture is similiar to what those three kids looked like.

The main difference is that my Owl Kids didn't have any white feathers, at least not yet (they were all grey). Also, their heads were a bit rounder than the owl in that picture. But like I said, they were still just kids when the guy from Fish and Game took them.


But one thing is for sure.......they grew fat and happy on worms and insects!!


From my experience, Owls will make excellent pets for the right person....somebody like mighty_colts!!!!