Cricket, Missing beaks, that takes me back. Some lowlife types saw the beaks off pelicans and leave them to starve in the wild. Some are rescued and cared for. I even saw where one had a prosthetic beak made of FRP/GRP (whatever you call what some folks call fiberglass.) I haven't done caged birds, except for rehab purposes, since the late 60's when a cocatiel we had comitted suicide. It wasn't pining for the fiords but one morning we found it with its head wedged in the bars of the bottom of its cage, stone dead, its metabolic processes, extinct. (Excuse the Monty Python, I am an incurable fan).

I raised some racing homers as a grade schooler and dabbled in falconry. I once asked the owner of the neighbor hay grain and milling company to check with her customers regarding a nesting pair of Kestrels. Never heard a word about the sparrow hawks but got a call about an animal control officer who had a horned owl in his vehicle with one wing clipped.

Seems it was found on someones back porch and the lady threw a box over it and called the animal control folks. I called them and asked if they had MY OWL. They said what kind of owl could I be talking about (cagey sorts). I said it was a Pacific Horned Owl with one clipped wing. They say, "yeah?, whch wing?" They aren't an easy mark. I flip a mental coin and say right wing. They say to come get my owl, so I did. I had to pay 65 cents for the 65 cents/day they charged for feeding it chicken necks. On a diet of chicken necks the bird would have gone into convulsions and died within a short period. I took it home and having no cage turned it lose in the kitchen. When my wife returned home she went into the kitchen to get a glass of water and kept hearing clicking sounds (owl talons on linoleum). Eventually she noticed the owl and got real curious about what was up. I got the owl into a temp cage while building a larger one. I bought some "feeder" mice and rats, some Purina Rat Chow, and built a breeding cage for the rats. As rats breed like rodents, I had a sustainable food source going pretty quickly without having to buy many feeder animals. I tried to avoid contact with the bird as my goal was release into the wild after its flight feathers grew back in. I did learn to "speak" owl pretty good and when I came in from classes I would call to "Spooky" and get a reply.

Feeding was interesting but not for the squeamish. Toss a live adult rat into the cage with the owl and the dumb rat as likely as not would climb up the cage and go out on the owls perch. Owl would lift up one leg and with good speed reach out and grab the rat by thte skull, crushing its talons into the brain. Rat expired in a fraction of a second, it looked like electrocution. Then the owl rips it up a bit and swallows it nearly whole. The owls stomach is a wonder. It ties up the feet, claws, larger bones, etc, in a backage wrapped up in the pelt and spits it out.

One time a Great Horned Owl (they get over 6 ft in span) payed a nocturnal visit to Spooky. Its hooting echoed through the neighborhood waking my wife and who knows how many others. I had to get up and go outside and move Spooky under cover before the Great Horned Owl would leave. They will rake a person with their talons so I was alert. Another "incident" we called the great escape. The rats made a prison break and dug a hole next to their cage. They would come up to get foor through the bars but hang out in the hole in the ground. I didn't see them out in the open much. My wife had a Ruger Bearcat, a cute little .22 single actio six shooter that I loaded with 5mm round ball ammo and went rat hunting every day after school till the rodent mennace was elliminated and the world was once again a safe place for women and children.

After several months the feathers grew out and spring came to the Laguna Mountains east of San Diego so we packed a picnic lunch and took Spooky for a ride. We found a place with only about 75-80% snow coverage left and lots of rodent tracks in the snow. We released Spooky who walked abot 6 ft then took off. We ate lunch then went for a walk in the woods. I called out to Spooky in my best Pacific Horned Owl dialect and got a faint reply. We homed in on the replys and found Spooky about 15 ft up in a tree on a short dead limb looking like a scene out of a Disney flick. I had to crawl up an adjacent tree to get a good shot with my 35mm camera. And that was that. I never doubted the owl chances to "make it".


Pat