Barn Owl Babies Left For Dead?
April 2010
It has been a joint effort between WildRescue and Wildlife Center of Silicon Valley to help two baby barn owls, orphaned after their home in a palm tree was destroyed.
Their old home.
Tuesday, April 6, a tree trimming company cut down a large palm tree where a pair of barn owls had been nesting. From what we have gathered, workers placed the fuzzy, white grapefruit-sized babies on the side of the busy highway, near the pile of debris that was once their home.
One owlet died, two survived. They were apparently found by a passerby who contacted the local animal control agency. The two surviving owlets were taken to Wildlife Center of Silicon Valley for treatment for dehydration and hypothermia.
Wild animals stand the greatest chance of surviving if raised by wild parents. Humans cannot teach them where to forage, what to eat, what to be frightened of, where to hide, and how to socialize with others of their own kind. Whenever possible, wildlife rescuers will try to do reunite families.
Working on the owl box.
Hoping they could reunite the remaining owlet with their parents, volunteers at the wildlife center built an owl box. By Saturday evening, the new nest box was installed on a tall pole near where the tree had once been. The babies were placed inside. Rescuers watched from a distance to see if the parents would return to their young. By 10:00 pm, at least one parent had visited the box and stood on top of it.
Sunday, midday, a wildlife veterinarian and rehabilitator from Wildlife Center of Silicon Valley checked in on the two and found them looking good, with evidence of the parents feeding.
This was a tremendous undertaking for both WildRescue and the folks at Wildlife Center of Silicon Valley. While the expense of time, energy, and money was worth it, the situation could have been avoided altogether.
All native birds are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It is illegal to disturb or harass birds or their nests. The tree trimming company should have known to stop trimming when they saw the adults. Closer investigation at that point would have revealed the babies and the work would have been halted until they were old enough to fly off. Even if they had trimmed most of the tree before finding the babies, a nest box could have been erected in place of the palm frond nest. Destroying an active nest and displacing the babies is a crime. The US Fish and Wildlife Service investigates possible violations like this one.
It's likely the tree trimmers will claim 'they didn't know' any better. But just because they may not have been aware of the law, there is a kind of Universal law that they must be held accountable to - you just don't leave helpless babies on the side of the road like that.
Trapped Virginia Opossum
March 2010
It was close to noon when we received a call from managers of a housing complex in Morgan Hill - they had mistakenly trapped an opossum in a box trap meant for feral cats. This is simple to avoid - traps for cats should be set during the day, not at night.
The poor opossum had been in the trap for hours. He'd tried and tried to get out - wasting valuable energy and risking injury to his gums and the soft pads of his hand-like paws.
The fellow who had set the trap, had once before released a skunk - quite brave - but this opossum, with its ferocious posturing and more teeth than any other land mammal, got the best of his him. It was our new volunteer, Sammarye, to the rescue.
Sammarye is no newbie to rescues - she helps capture and care for seals and sea lions through The Marine Mammal Center. Surely she could handle this little creature.
Sammarye arrived shortly and within minutes had the opossum out of the trap and inside a cat carrier. He spent the rest of the afternoon recuperating, sleeping in the shade at her home. He drank some water and had some apple and cat food before he was released back at the housing complex that evening, just in time for Earth Hour! Thank you Sammarye!
Entangled Striped Skunk
February 2010
February 8th, at about 1:00 pm, we received an emergency page about a skunk that had gotten its head stuck in the netting of a baseball batting cage on a private residence in the rural hills of Aptos. He'd been stuck since at least 8:30, according to the homeowner.
We arrived on scene just before 2:00 to find an adult male striped skunk - about the size of a house cat, entangled in netting. Sometime before dawn he had evidently poked his head through the netting and gotten stuck. In his panic, he began twisting and spinning, trying to get free.
We approached slowly with a blanket held up to shield us from his spray. We used another sheet and a long-handled net to cover him. Even though he'd struggled so much and for so long that he was near exhaustion, he was still putting up a fight and spraying.
Skunk spray is very unpleasant. It smells like the most intense poultice of sweet garlic and onions. Awful, noxious, but worth suffering through to help a very nice beast, the skunk. Skunks do us great service by eating rodents, insects, moth larvae, beetles, and carrion.
As we got closer, we could hear that he was choking - the netting was wound so tight around his neck. He was so badly entangled we felt it safest to cut him away from the net and have him sedated to remove the rest.
We backed the skunk into a 5 gallon plastic bucket that had air holes and a screw down lid and drove him to Los Gatos to meet up with Dr. Chad Alves, who quickly sedated hima and removed the netting. The skunk was then given fluids to counter dehydration.
At 7:00 pm we released him back on the property where he waddled off into the darkness of the woods.
The homeowners agreed to cut the base of the batting cage up off the ground to prevent it from injuring any more wildlife.