Author: mamaroo43214595

A few days ago I was taking the washing outside.  It’s a bit of an epic feat to do this….  Because I need to be kind to my back I like to put the washing basket on the laundry trolley;  however because I have quite a few steps between the back door and the back yard, I can’t get the trolley up the steps easily.  So it lives at the base of the steps and off to one side.  I take the full laundry basket to the top of the steps (it’s not far from the laundry to the top of the steps, just a few feet) and deposit it there, descend the steps, make sure the trolley is in position, grab the basket and put it on the trolley and push it out to the clothes line.  How easy this is usually depends on whether Nolan decides he needs to help me….

 

This particular day, I got as far as putting the basket on the top step.  I looked down to see where I was going, and noticed something moving in the dogs’ water dish.  I often see things in the dogs’ water dish…..but usually insects and such like…this was somewhat larger, and splashing round furiously.  Of course I went to investigate.  It was a frog!  Why it was in the water dish I had no idea, but it was obviously having problems getting out!  It was doing a creditable breast stroke but not really getting anywhere, so I thought I’d better get it out of there….frogs like to swim in water, but once they get past the tadpole stage, they like to get out occasionally to breathe!

 

So I carefully tipped out the water onto an overgrown garden (I’m at present working on it, but I hadn’t got down to this section yet, so there were plenty of weeds for him to hide in) and of course he landed on the ground.  He looked rather relieved and I hurried up the steps to grab my camera.  Seeing the way I hurry is rather like a snail’s version of quick march, I was quite surprised to find him still there on my return.  He posed quite well for me while I took a few pictures.  Apart from recording the occasion, I wanted to be able to identify him.  He, on the other hand, was probably feeling rather frazzled, and needed the time to collect himself….

So I went back inside, and loaded the pictures onto the computer.  Then I googled Australian frogs, and after much searching found three possibilities.  I eventually narrowed it down to…..the Barking Frog….also known as the Long Thumbed Frog, and the Barking Marsh Frog.  Barking Frog, thinks I?  Rather appropriate that he deposited himself in the dogs’ water dish then….  Why a Barking Frog?…. I read on.  Instead of going “ribbet”…or “kneedeep”…or even “croak”….or even “bonk, bonk”, as in the case of the banjo or pobblebonk frog (to which it is related), its call is similar to the sound of a distant barking dog.  Ah, I thought, now this makes sense.  For the last few days, I had occasionally heard what sounded like a dog barking in the distance.  This is not unusual, but normally, Gypsy (and sometimes Nolan) usually barks back whenever she heard another dog barking.  Not this time, and it puzzled me a little.  The penny dropped.  She didn’t bark, because she knew it wasn’t a dog.  Instead of a distant dog, I had a frog….either in my yard or close enough that I could hear it!

 

After I had finished my searching, I went back outside.  The frog had disappeared, no doubt to somewhere safer.  I haven’t heard it since….hopefully it’s now swimming in a pool it can get out of easily!

Oscar was brought to me as a little bundle of fluff with enormous eyes, and a huge mouth.  He was a baby tawny frogmouth, found in the middle of a paddock, on a tree trunk, no parents in sight, and no trees nearby for them to be hiding in.  Tawny frogmouths are similar to an owl in a lot of respects, but are not considered “raptors”.  They hunt at night, like owls, but they haven’t got the talons for catching large prey like owls do.  But they have a HUGE mouth, which is brightly coloured inside, so that it scares predators away when they open it wide…and wide it is!  And that’s what this little fellow was doing, trying so hard to scare predators away, when he was found.  He was so tiny, and his mouth and eyes seemed to be all that you could see.  So the lady picked up this little critter, objecting loudly, and wrapped him in a towel, then put him in a box, and brought him in to me.  Well he was still objecting while I opened the box.  I transferred him to a cat carrier, which was just the right size for him, and put things in there for him to sit on, and prepared some dog biscuits, by soaking them, till I was able to get him some more appropriate food.  He was no trouble to feed, as soon as someone went near him, the mouth would open wide, and so would the eyes, so I could just drop bits of food in, and eventually he would swallow.  I soon discovered that his very favourite food was liver, which I would cut into small bits, and he would eagerly swallow it.  I also discovered that I had to line his cage with towels etc, because he had rather liquid “poos” which he could aim rather well outside of his cage, if left unlined…..

 

I noticed that when he was asleep, even at a young age, he would adopt the “tree branch” pose.  In the wild, their best defense during the day is the fact that with their “camouflage” feathers, and the way they sit, they manage to look remarkably like a dead tree branch.  Many people have assumed they were looking at a branch, till the branch opened its eyes, and scared the daylights out of them.  This little bloke didn’t have anything approaching his camouflage feathers yet, but he instinctively knew that’s what a frogmouth should do.  And he did.  So in good weather, I would let him sit outside in one of the fruit trees, and practise…..

 

As he got older, he grew, and soon got too big for the cat carrier, and moved to bigger quarters.  They too had to be lined, as he was still free and easy in that department, and I would put him outside as often as I could get him out there.  My aviary wasn’t functional, so I couldn’t have him outside at night, because that was his active time, and who knows where he would end up!  He was moved yet again, and this time he was approaching adult size.  He was still a “juvenile”, but had grown his camouflage feathers, and lost all his baby down.  He still had his huge mouth and eyes, and he had TERRIBLE breath, but then eating raw liver and moths and bugs would do that….and he had learned to fly.  I had started leaving him out in the evenings, to encourage him to fly, but used to rush out to bring him back in before he escaped.  But of course one day, that’s exactly what he did…he escaped.  He flew over the fence, and when I went out to get him he was nowhere to be found.  I checked all the nearby trees, and he was conspicuous by his absence, and the next morning I checked them again.  Several days later a neighbour rang me telling me she had a young tawny frogmouth in her front yard imitating a tree stump.  It was a hot day, and he seemed heat stressed, so she hosed him, but she was concerned a cat would get him.  I went to investigate, and of course it was him.  He tried to scare me away, but I threw a towel over him, and bundled him up and took him home.  He was very hungry, and was very grateful for some liver, and other goodies.  I then expedited the arrangements for him to go somewhere where he could be taught to feed himself, and generally learn what he needed to succeed in the wild.  After a few days R & R, I took him out there.  We put him in the bottom of the aviary, and he took an instant dislike to his new carer, which I was rather pleased about, showed it wasn’t just me…. and after he had calmed down, he flew up to a branch and assumed his camouflage position.

 

I spoke to his new carer after a few weeks, and she informed me he was a willing learner when introduced to learning to hunt, and after a short time she was able to leave the aviary door open, and he took the hint and went!

So hopefully he has found a mate, and produced his own little “grouch”….or even “grouches”…..

A very bedraggled looking crimson rosella was brought to my house one day.  As is the usual, he was found on the side of the road, stunned, and as well as obviously having concussion, he had also managed to lose most of his tail feathers, which meant he would probably have a bit of trouble steering, when he started flying again.  I put him in a box so that he could recover from his headache, handling him very carefully, because injured as he was, he was still very cranky, and those beaks can do a lot of damage!  I checked on him from time to time, and made sure he had plenty of food and water.

 

After he had been in care for 24 hours, I took him out of the box (I covered him with a towel, and then picked him up still wrapped in it, to save injury to my fingers, and sat him on the edge while I changed the newspaper, and got rid of the uneaten seed, and replaced it with fresh.  He still looked slighty off with the pixies, and made no attempt to escape, so I put him back in for another 24 hours.  I did the same thing the next day, with a similar reaction, so back in the box.  However the next day, his eyes seemed brighter, but he still made no attempt to fly, but I thought, maybe tomorrow.  I didn’t put him straight back in the box, I thought I’d leave him for a while and see what transpired, so I went off to do a couple of things.

 

Five or ten minutes later I came back, and I must have startled him.  He rose in the air like a helicopter, and then took off at a rate of knots through the house, straight over the top of the cat who was asleep in a chair.  The cat woke up, and looked around trying to find out what on earth did that.  The bird meanwhile had landed on top of the piano, and sat there looking rather pleased with himself.  I picked up the towel and advanced on him quietly and slowly, but he watched me the whole time.  No way was he going back in that box willingly.  He flew from the piano to the nearest chair, but he slid on the top of it, and landed on the floor underneath it, then waddled underneath it, and then underneath the chair the cat was on.  The cat was clearly puzzled by all these proceedings….first birds swooping over his head, and now they’re walking underneath him!  Good grief, is nothing sacred??  Just as I was about to drop the towel over the bird, he took off, and flew onto the top of the airconditioner, which is placed high on the wall over the window.  Oh wonderful I thought, now I cant get you at all, without climbing on the table.   Oh well…… but as I approached he took off again, this time executing a beautiful right hand turn, and heading off down the hall, and landing on the venetian blinds, which of course didn’t hold him up, and he slid down them, and I was able to throw the towel over him and get him back into the box.  Having noticed how well he took that turn, I thought, he’s right……if he can turn like that he’ll be okay back in the bush.

 

I secured the box, grabbed my purse, and off to the car we went.  I drove out to near where he was found, and kept going a little way till I found a place where I could release him that would be well away from the road.  I parked the car, and headed into the bush, box under my arm.  When I reckoned I was a safe distance from the road, I put the box on the ground and opened it.  The bird took off straight away, almost taking my head with him in his eagerness to be away, and flew about a hundred metres and landed about 20′ up a huge gum tree.  He walked up and down the branch a few times, then started calling.  In the distance I heard similar cries, so I knew it wouldn’t be long till he was back with his flock.

 

I picked up the box, and headed back to the car with a big smile on my face…..it always feels so great when you get to let one go…..

This incident took place when I was attending a Residential School at the Uni I was attending.  The dormitories were rather unattractive concrete box shaped buildings situated approximately a mile away from the campus.  There was a bus you could catch, or you could walk through a lovely park, where there were all sorts of lovely trees, birds and animals, introduced and native.  Guess which option I chose?

 

Each morning after a lovely breakfast I would set off along one of the various paths, admiring all the flora and fauna.  In an enclosure I could see some deer, and a fairly elderly kangaroo.  I’m sure if he’d wanted to he could have jumped the fence….the deer probably could have too, but I suppose they were quite happy with their lot, because they looked very well fed.  There were rabbits hopping around, and different birds in the trees, and several different types of ducks, and ibises and spoonbills wandering around as well.   I reckoned they were pretty used to people, because they used to ignore me completely…..until the last morning at least.  Then I met two little wood ducks.  They are fairly small sized ducks, grey and brown in colour, and they were just alongside the path I was walking on, “talking” to each other as I approached.  Then the little male rushed towards me, wings extended, and head and neck out in a typical aggressive pose.  He was hissing for all he was worth, and I couldn’t help myself, I just stopped and burst out laughing.  I had never experienced such behaviour before……he wouldn’t have stood much more that a foot high, and here he was taking me on.  I think it came as a bit of a shock to him that I wasn’t intimidated because as soon as he realised I wasn’t going to run away screaming, he immediately stopped, and actually looked embarrassed.  He went back to his mate, talking the whole way, and it really sounded as though he was apologising, and probably blaming his wife for the whole thing.  She in the mean time was scolding him, so perhaps he WAS henpecked, and he really was acting on instructions…or perhaps they had a nest.

 

I found out later that the Wood Duck is also called the Maned Duck, or Maned Goose, and is actually a type of goose, and if you are being harrassed by a goose the correct thing to do is to stand and call their bluff.  So unwittingly I had done the right thing, although it wasn’t from bravery……

A lady rang one day saying she had visitors who had brought her an injured echidna.  What should she do?  I asked her what had happened, and from what she told me it sounded as though the echidna was a victim of a traffic accident, but my ears really pricked up when she said it had a baby, especially when she said how small it was.  So I took her number and details, and rang Sue straight away.  Sue immediately rang her, and organised picking up mum and baby.  In the course of her conversation, she gleaned further details about the incident.  It seems the echidna was just on the side of the road, minding its own business, and these people came past, and concerned that it may get injured staying there, decided to pick it up, and take it with them (instead of attempting to get it to move off the road under its own steam).  As most of you would be aware, it’s not an easy task picking up an echidna, but our intrepid pair did.  Then they put said echidna not in a box, or a container of some sort, but on the floor in the back of the car.  Now when they arrived at their friend’s place, the echidna had taken up residence under the front seat of the car, and wedged itself there.  To get her out, they had to practically dismantle the insides of the car, and this time, while getting her out, she and her baby (whom nobody even realised existed at this stage) parted company.  They attempted to reunite them, but mum was not interested, she just curled herself up in a little ball, and in the process managed to injure the baby, piercing its leg with one of her quills.  The baby was a sort of grey colour, completely smooth, but the grey colour was caused by the spikes and hair getting ready to grow.  Its eyes were closed, and ear canals were closed too.  It fitted in the palm of Sue’s hand.

 

So Sue picked up the pair, and attempted to get mum to accept the baby once more.  Each time mum refused, so after a few days, Sue released the mother, and started feeding the baby. The baby is still in care, and has recovered from its leg wound (not without major hassles), and now looks like a miniature echidna, with a full compliment of spikes, complete with the sailor’s walk as it wanders along.  It is very used to its milk, and if Sue has to handle it, out comes the tongue in anticipation.  It only gets fed every other day.  Last time I spoke to Sue, she was getting ready to find some termites for it, so it is definitely growing up.  It is also becoming a bit of an escape artist, looking for every opportunity to burrow out of its little container.  It has been a challenge to look after in the hot weather, because it has to be kept cool, as though it was underground in its burrow, so Sue has to monitor the temperature carefully, and keep the ice up to it.

It is no longer cute and cuddly, but it is still cute.

I was lucky enough to be the carer of a baby sugar glider.  Sugar gliders are like tiny little possums, fully grown ones are around 15″ from nose to tail, (and there’s more tail than anything else…) beautiful little soft silver grey things with bright black eyes.  They have huge fluffy tails, and membranes between their legs so that they can launch themselves from a branch and glide to a lower one, or to the ground……..it acts like a parachute.  They can also be cranky little critters, terribly noisy, quite aggressive at times, escape artists extraordinaire, and they are nocturnal, which means they love to be up and playing when you’re in bed.  They normally only eat plant matter (and they love sweet stuff!  hence their name) and some insects, but I have been told that they will kill other small animals in self defense, or to defend their young….so definitely feisty little things.

 

Anyway this little fellow arrived.  He had lost his mum to a cat, but luckily he was unharmed.  He arrived in a sock, which had been tied at one end so he was confined to barracks, which was a very wise move.  I then placed the sock inside a beanie, and he had a snug little pouch.  He was about three quarters grown, so I knew he wouldn’t be in a pouch for long.  I used to take him out of his pouch (very very carefully, in case he made a break for it) twice a day, and gave him a teaspoon of possum formula.  He put his little paws on the side of the spoon and lapped it up, every drop.  At the night time feed, I would also give him a fruit salad of sorts, a couple of slices of banana, a few grapes, a slice of apple, in fact a little of whatever I had, then I would sprinkle a high protein powder over the top, which he would industriously lick off before he ate anything else.  I would give him this after dark, but before I went to bed.  As he got older and more used to us, I would bring him out to the living area.  I would put him on the floor, or on a chair.  He would look around and find the highest thing, and run up it.  If you were standing up, and you were the highest thing, he would run up you, and sit on your head.  You had to make sure you wore adequate clothes, because his little claws were sharp.  After he had sat on your head for a while, he would launch himself off, throwing his legs out wide, stretching those membranes, and glide to the floor, or land on a chair, whatever he was aiming for, and then climb up to another vantage point.  He particularly liked climbing the venetian blinds, right to the top.  Especially if he had a piece of fruit in his mouth.  He would hang from the top of the blinds by his tail, upside down, and hold the fruit in his front paws, and chew it all up.  Then he would have a game with the cords belonging to the venetian blinds.  Then he would launch himself down, grab some more food, and repeat the performance.  Obviously, we called him Tarzan……

 

Of course, as he grew older, he outgrew the need for a pouch, so we gave him a small box, warmly lined, and he used to curl up in that during the day.  Sometimes he would work his way into the wardrobe, and I would find him curled up in a pocket of someones jacket, but beautifully warm.  He would also come out of his hiding place after I had gone to bed, and glide down from the top of the wardrobe, and land on my chest.  I would wake up to see these bright eyes, studying my face, and this little voice chittering away.  There was no way I could stop him doing this, and at this stage I had no aviary, and there was no other room I could leave him in at night that was secure.  So the easiest thing was for me to move…….so I could get some sleep.  And then it was a case of get the aviary built, or move him on…..and he needed to go to be with another sugar glider, so they could be released together, and at that stage there were none in care, apart from him.  So work continued apace on the aviary, which was needed anyway, but before it was finished, I heard that another one was in care….at last!  The day arrived for him to move, and he was packed in his box with the utmost care, so that he would be comfortable, and so he couldn’t escape!  The idea of him bouncing around on my head as I drove along was not wonderful….We arrived safely at his new home, and I handed him over.  He would be introduced to his new housemate, a female, later, seeing it was still day time, but in the mean time, he was taken to the enclosure still tied in his box, so they could get used to each others’ scents before the actual meeting.  I left them to it, and drove home to reclaim my bedroom…

A phone call from the phone co-ordinator one day asking me to call a lady about a possum trapped in their stove.  So I called the lady, and talk about panic stricken….obviously she was concerned that if she lit the stove, she might hurt the possum, but she was also concerned that the possum may suddenly untrap itself, and unleash itself on them one night, and slaughter them all in their beds, and she was also worried that what if it escaped as I was rescuing it and rampaged through the house?  I managed to convince her that possums were not interested in killing anyone, and that seeing I had to rescue the possum from the stove in the first place it was highly unlikely it would get loose in the house, and I suggested that when I attempted to rescue it, she and the children could retire to a different part of the house, and shut the door to the kitchen, so if it DID escape, it would be contained in one room.  So I made arrangements to check the stove out and see what could be done, and turned up shortly thereafter in protective clothing and with appropriate equipment for putting trapped possums in.

 

Well I got there and came face to face with a stove like a cockpit in a plane.  I had never seen anything quite like it.  It had dials, doors and compartments everywhere.  I couldn’t actually work out, though, where you did your cooking.  I knew the possum was in there somewhere, and just had to work out where.  So the moment of truth arrived;  mum and the kids withdrew and shut the door leaving me and dad to do battle with the possum.  So we started  undoing anything that looked hopeful, till we managed to catch a glimpse of fur.  Trouble was it was a long way down, and just a little further than I could reach.  Dad bravely volunteered to try and grab it, so I took the bag he was holding.  He reached down, and grabbed a tail, and pulled firmly, and up came a very startled, not very big, sleepy possum.  Just as Dad was lowering him into the bag, the door burst open, and in came Mum, who saw the possum and screamed.  Well the poor possum woke up, and decided he didn’t like proceedings AT ALL! and started wriggling like mad.  The only thing I could do was quickly get the bag round him, because I knew he was going to wriggle out of Dad’s grasp.  Mum beat a hasty retreat as I secured the possum in the bag, much to Dad’s relief.  Mum came back in, with the kids, and Dad verbally took a few pieces out of her for her almost disastrous interruption.  She just wanted to see how things were going, she said.  I stayed right out the simmering domestic, and pointed out I would be releasing this guy as soon as possible, and unless they covered the chimney, if he didn’t come back, another one would, and also pointing out that he would HAVE to go back near the house, because that’s where his territory was.  I felt as though I was talking to a brick wall, and thought I’ll be back, and I hope it’s not a big one I have to pull out of that stove next time!

 

Time passed, and the people moved, and the house remained empty for a short time between tenants.  One day when I was down the street, the real estate agent called me in and said they had a professional cleaner in getting one of their houses ready for occupation, and she heard funny noises coming from the stove, and wondered whether there might be a possum in it, would I mind having a look.  He told me the address, and  sure enough it was the same place.  I called my friend Sue and round we went.  Back to pulling this state of the art stove apart.  Eventually, right down underneath everything, we saw an eye.  And this was a big possum we could see when we shone the torch on him, but so far into the depths of the stove we didn’t have a hope of getting him.  We had by this time worked out a little bit about the stove, so we put it back together, and left the flue open so hopefully he could go out again that night, and well after dark we went back.  Again we pulled the stove apart, and this time no sign of the possum, so we reassembled it, and closed the flue.  Next morning I returned the key and told them what we had done, and stressed how important it was to put a cover over the chimney.  They promised it would be done, and it must have been, because the present tenants have reported no sign of a possum.  Thank goodness!

One of the local school teachers rang me, asking if I could help, she thought they had possums in the ceiling, and was worried because they seemed to holding discos in the airconditioning ducts.  So I called in to see her, and I saw the yellow tell tail signs on the ceiling, showing that not only were they holding dances up there, they were also going to the loo.  I knew they were probably also nibbling at electrical wires too, which could lead to dire consequences, so action had to be taken!

 

I knew I would need help (I am absolutely hopeless with ladders these days), so I called the possum expert.  In came Sue with a couple of possum traps, and the maintenance lady found an appropriate ladder.  Sue climbed up into the ceiling through a manhole, and shone her trusty torch around.  She caught the reflection of an eye, and crawled towards him.  He backed into a space where Sue couldn’t fit, so we set the trap, baited with an apple, and left it there.  Sue descended the ladder, and we went down the other end of the building and repeated the performance with the other trap.  We explained to the maintenance lady that she would need to find all the holes where the possums were going in and out, and they would all need to be plugged, once we caught the possums, otherwise they would all get back in again.  Some of the holes were pretty obvious, and she said she would find them, and plug most, and do the rest once we had started catching them.  The next day Sue and I went back to the school to find one trap had been sprung and the apple eaten, but no possum caught.  The other one contained the one Sue had seen, a big grandfather possum with one eye, and many scars.  We decided we should have him checked out by the vet before we released him, because he looked as though he had only recently lost his eye.  So Sue set the other trap again, and I took this bloke to the vets, picking up another carer on the way for assistance, and just as well I did.  We took him out of the trap, and held him firmly while the vet checked him out.  However, even though we held him firmly, he still managed to wriggle around, and almost escaped.  He started sliding round on the table, which was stainless steel;  he was growling and we could hear his claws trying to find a grip on the slippery surface, and as the pair of us carers struggled to contain him, we could see the vet backing towards the door.  At last we managed it, and the vet continued the check and pronounced him fine for release, much to everyone’s relief, I wasn’t relishing looking after this guy any longer than I had to.

 

So, at dusk that evening, “The Pirate”, as we called him, was released, and refused to climb the tree that the trap was next to, prefering instead to climb the fence and head back towards the school.  I wasn’t worried, because I thought all the holes had been plugged up by this, and thought he would just find another home nearby.  Next day Sue and I took that trap back to the school and set it, and found that the other one now contained another possum.  She appeared fine, so we decided she could be released at dusk.  We kept this up for several days, releasing possums as we caught them, the only difference being the days Sue couldn’t go, another helper, a policeman, would stand in.  Then after 4 possums, we caught “The Pirate” again.  So, a quick inspection of the holes was carried out.  Sure enough one had been disturbed from the inside, and that was how he had got back in.  So, the hole was replugged, and he was released again that night, and we hoped that none of the others had returned as well.  This time, when we released the possums, we sprayed them with a vegetable dye, so we would recognise them…..we knew we’d know “The Pirate”….and sure enough we realised we were catching the same ones again.  More checking of holes, and eventually after we had caught our seventh possum, all seemed peaceful at last under the school roof.  The plugs in the holes were staying secure, and we stopped catching them.  We worked out that we had really only caught four possums, just some of them twice!

 

One of the possums later took up residence in a small outbuilding that was used for tool storage, and eventually she was seen with a baby on her back.  None returned to wreak havoc in the main school building….

(This all happened before cell phones and cordless phones.  We just had landlines….with cords)

 

A lady came to my door with an owl in a box.  She had found it on the road near her place, out in the country, and it had been hit by a car.  She told me it was pretty easy to pick up when she found it, as it was stunned, but now it was getting a bit feisty, and please, please could I take it?  I said yes, I would, and I’ll get it to our eagle and owl man as soon as I could.  She looked visibly relieved, and I thought I would be able to just leave it in the box and hand it to Paul in due course.  My smugness didn’t last long…..

 

I rang Paul and told him I had an owl in a box, and it had been hit by a car.  Then he said, I want you to look at the owl and see what injuries it has.  My heart sank.  At this stage I hadn’t done a “raptor handling course” and the only thing I really knew about owls was that they had enormous eyes, and even more enormous talons, that could rip holes in you.  I’ll call you back when I’ve had a look, I said, and he said, oh no, that’s ok, I can talk you through it.  Take a towel and open the box, make sure you’re behind the bird, and cover it with the towel, making sure you cover the head, and make sure you grab hold of its feet with one hand, so it can’t grab you with the talons.  Right.  I put the phone down, and off I went, armed with a large towel, in fear and trembling.  I carefully opened the box…and there was this very cross face looking at me.  Remembering what Paul said, I moved round behind the bird.  The eyes followed me, I’d forgotten owls could turn their heads like that kid from the Exorcist.  Okay, so I was behind the bird, but he was still looking at me….so I threw caution to the wind, and put the towel over his head, and body, pinning his wings to his body, so he couldn’t flap them and hurt himself, and making sure I grabbed his legs, just above those talons, so he couldn’t do me any damage.  Right.  Stage 1, now back to the phone.  The adrenalin had kicked in by this…..

 

I picked up the phone and told Paul I had the bird, and that I had noticed one wing was drooping.  Ok, said Paul, organise the towel so that you’re still protected from his talons, and beak, and feel the wing, see if you can find where it’s broken.  My brain was in overdrive by this…I had to do all that, and keep talking to Paul on the phone.  I was wondering whether perhaps I could quickly grow some more hands!  Somehow I managed to get my hand under the towel, and find the injured wing, and feel along the bones with one hand.  I found the break, and told him it felt to be in the equivalent of the finger bones.  Right he said, that’s good, that’s probably mendable.  Pop him back in the box, and I’ll meet you in half an hour, at our usual half way spot.

 

So I popped him back in the box……securing it carefully…….then I took him to the car, and drove to the meeting place…still high on adrenalin.  I met Paul, and he took the bird.  He said he would take it to the vet and get an xray, and if all looked good, he would take it home and start rehabilitating it.  He said it was a Barking Owl.

 

So I went home……and decided a cup of tea and a good lie down was in order after all that.

 

Paul rang a few days later, and I asked him how the bird was.  Well he said, I took it to the vets for an xray, and the vets had a good look at him.  The bird coped well for a while, and then decided it was all too much, and screamed like a woman being murdered.  Paul then told me that was the normal sound for a  distressed Barking Owl.

 

I can only imagine what the people in the waiting room were thinking……

The vets decided the prognosis was good, and Paul took him home, and several weeks later, moved him into the flight aviary, where he encouraged him to start flying again.  When he managed this successfully, he was released near where he was found….but away from the road……

 

A few days ago, I was called to pick up a kookaburra that a gentleman had found caught in his fence, hanging by his neck.  He was very concerned, and I really didn’t thing the poor fellow would survive.  So I took him home, and put him in a box, and there he sat all night, and seeing he was still with us the next morning, I spent the next day feeding him and hoping he would recover.

 

The following morning, I heard a funny noise in the room where he was, and went to investigate.  There he was, sitting on top of the wardrobe.  The box I thought was escape proof, obviously wasn’t.  And no way was he going to come down for me;  instead he flew to another wardrobe, but failed to find perching space on it and fell behind it.  Well I thought here we go, kookaburra stuck behind the wardrobe, this WILL be fun getting him out, but this bird, well I’m sure his name must be Houdini, managed to fall all the way to the floor…….not sure how, but he did, and as I’m trying to work out how to get him out, he waddled out from the bottom of the wardrobe….covered in cobwebs!  Ah, thinks I, now I can catch him….but no, he’s too fast for me and flies back to the first wardrobe, out of my reach AGAIN!!

 

So I opened the door to the back yard, and wedged it open so it wouldn’t accidentally blow shut, closed all the windows and anything that might lead him to  think he could escape anywhere else but the back door, and left him to it.  I came back half an hour later to find him still perched defiantly on the wardrobe, so I withdrew again.  Half an hour later I returned just in time to see him fly out the back door!  Oh what a relief….and rushed to shut the door in case he changed his mind…….