To the rescue of an injured barred owl
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Capturing an injured juvenile barred owl from a hot tub takes care and planning. The owl had to be calmed by covering it with a sheet. Then it was boxed up for the trip to the rehabilitation expert in El Campo.
Barred owls are common around Victoria. They are large, 17 inches tall with 44-inch wing spans. They have round heads with no ear tufts, dark eyes, and whitish under-parts with dark streaks.
At night, you hear them calling, sounding like "who-cooks-for-you, who-cooks-for-you-all."
They do well in rural and urban environments, helping control the rodent population. Unfortunately, barreds, commonly called hoot owls, sometimes fly into moving vehicles, injuring or killing themselves. Such was the case recently.
We received a call from a fellow Master Gardener living near Thomaston. She'd had an owl with a drooping left wing sitting in a nearby tree several days. It could hop down to drink from a sprinkler and get back up into the tree. She'd tried helping it, offering strips of raw beef, which it ate.
Between us, we checked with rehab people and contacted Texas Parks and Wildlife to see if it could be captured and treated. A TPWD biologist visited her place, but the bird wasn't found. The next morning, she called, the bird was back, sitting in the hot tub next to her pool.
No one was available to do the rescue. So, with permission from the Parks and Wildlife, we headed off with two sheets, thick gloves, a big box, and a 10-gallon plastic flower pot, to capture the bird. It was arranged that a mammal rescue/rehabber in El Campo, would transport the owl to Lake Jackson, where a raptor expert could treat it. The lady in Lake Jackson had raccoons she would swap for the owl that day.
We arrived at the hot tub. There it was, a juvenile barred owl, soaking wet, weakly jumping around on the tub's shelf.
Paul approached, slipped the sheet over it to calm it, and hopped into the tub. Wearing the gloves, he restrained it by gently wrapping it in a sheet.
Once out of the water, we swapped the wet sheet for the dry one, placed the owl in the pot with the box upside down on top, and headed for El Campo.
The mammal rescuer delivered the owl to the raptor rehabber. First indication was that its wing was broken, a compound fracture, but maybe repairable.
We waited a few days and followed up. Sadly, the veterinarians found the open fracture had been exposed too long and was badly infected. It could not be pinned to repair it. The owl had to be euthanized.
While this was a sad ending, it does have a moral or two. Don't delay. If you see an injured wild animal and want to help it, contact help as soon as you can. Contact a game warden, a rehabber from the list on the Parks and Wildlife Web site, or someone trained to assist a rehabber.
If they instruct you to capture it, and you can do so safely, put it in a closed box with no food or water, just some soft smooth cloth for comfort. No towels, claws can tangle with any fabric loops.
Remember, you cannot keep wild animals, not without a federal permit. Some rehabilitated animals cannot be returned to the wild. They're kept for educational purposes by permitted parties: rehab people, zoos, Texas Aquarium in Corpus Christi, or Last Chance Forever, a raptor facility in San Antonio.
Paul and Mary Meredith are master naturalists. Contact them at paulmary0211@sbcglobal.net.
