SNN (ScrollingNetworkNews) ✿ ✿ Our Mel and Sydney returned to their nesting box with plenty of bonding occurring..but after 2.5 months of Sydney in the box from Dec 2013 to mid Feb 2014, the lack of prey gifts from Mel ( perhaps due to the severe and historic drought underway in California)and they have forgone the nesting process this year as many other raptors ✿ Compared to other owls of similar size, the Barn Owl has a much higher metabolic rate, requiring relatively more food. Pound for pound, Barn Owls consume more rodents – often regarded as pests by humans – than possibly any other creature. ✿ We remind viewers that sometimes owlets may not survive - the parents will dispose of things in "The Owl Way" -viewer discretion is advised, this is nature and the "Owl way". ✿ ~ ✿ “Animals, like us, are living souls. They are not things. They are not objects. Neither are they human. Yet they mourn. They love. They dance. They suffer. They know the peaks and chasms of being.” ― Gary Kowalski, The Souls of Animals ✿ Each species is a masterpiece, a creation assembled with extreme care and genius." ~ E.O. Wilson

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Happy Ending

A man and his family were cleaning up the their vacation home in Aptos and getting ready to leave when they discovered an opossum in the garbage bin. In fact, they had dropped a bag of trash on top of it.

The opossum looked as though it was dying. It might have been trapped in the large container for days, with very little to eat and nothing to drink. The opossum was actually in good shape! The twitching and death throes described, was the opossum just being an opossum - feigning death... but, then maybe it decided to stay in that position for a while. It must have been about 40 minutes from the time the can was tipped to when responders arrived.

The opossum was checked by a local mammal rehabilitator and we released it back to its home that evening at dark.