Owly Monday

Not too much for Owly Monday this week.  With a stressful, busy week at work and preparing for Christmas there hasn't been much time.  But I have Baby Barn Owl pix and updates and a Barn Owl wound update.  And some Christmas Tree Pix thrown in the mix.

First things first!  Here's a neat crafty owl made from a pine cone!  I think this would be a great idea for our annual Creatures of the Night kids craft.  There are so many pine cones around the Center, especially those big Longleaf Pine pine cones.

How about an Owly tea set?  I just love this set.  We saw one when we were on our mini Honeymoon in Charleston.  It was way overpriced and we couldn't justify it. 

And an Owly umbrella stand from Modern Poverty.  I would love to have this, but we have nowhere to put it. 

Kmart has this wonderful bathroom set.  I can't talk Sam into changing our Master Bathroom Leaf set to this.  Maybe I can at least talk him into the curtain rings, sine we have one missing....

Thats all I've got this week, now on to the real owls!

Haven't they grown?!  They have more than doubled their weights since they arrived and are now staying at the Center and eating whole mice.  And because I miss making fun charts in Excel, here's a weight chart for you.  I think they're about to bottom out in the weights.  With most parn owls, they generally get much heavier than their adult weight and then drop the weight.  First time I noticed it, it freaked me out, but I see it happen every year and, well, Birds of North America says it is so.

Caution: graphic pix again!

On to the Barbed Wire Barn Owl.  The wound is looking better and better!  The dead tissue is sloughing off and the new tissue is granulating in nicely.  It still looks gnarly, but if you've seen the daily progression, you'd be impressed.  (and thanks Miss Linda, for the wonderful handling job and the advice!)

Now to something a bit more pleasant to look at, our Christmas Tree. We watched Christmas Vacation and decorated the tree.  A fun old fashioned Griswold family Christmas!

All lit up.  Its hard taking a picture of the tree.

Close up of some ornaments...I love the one w/ Ireland (education Red-tailed Hawk), its in the upper right of the picture.  I can't tell you how many Owl ornaments I have...Sam wouldn't let me count.  There are a lot of bird ornaments too.

Notice there are no ornaments on the lower half of the tree.  All of them were knocked off by the kittens.  So as they are knocked off, we just put them on the top of the tree.

No pix of the mantle this year...its not wonderful.  I wish we could decorate the house more, but the kittens would tear up/break/knock over any and all decorations withing reach.  Maybe they'll be a little more mature next year.

And here they are...The demons watching Family Guy (yup they're definately our kitt-ehs.)  Chui (leopard in Swahili) is the calico and Eastwood is the black and white one.  We couldn't think of a good Swahili name for her, so we just started calling her Eastwood, the Cat with No Name.

Busy, Busy

It seems like this week is flying by! One more day and its the weekend! 

We've been getting a lot of Raptors at the Center lately and several species that we don't get too often.  We currently have 3, yes THREE, Sharp-shinned Hawks.  I think thats the total number we've had in any given year!  I'm hoping to release the first one, that we got in the beginning of November, next week.  The 2 baby Barn Owls are growing like weeds.  They've almost doubled in weight! 

An Adult Barn Owl came in yesterday from Winston County with barbed wire still entangled.  I wish I had snapped a picture of it. Its so very interesting to see the progression of these injuries from absolutely horrific to perfect. Sometimes these birds are just amazing in their healing abilities.  It looked like he/she flew right onto the wire and the skin on its chest got twisted and wrapped around the wire.  I cleaned it as best as I could and immediately sent it to the vet.  Here's a picture I took of the wound today.  Daily cleaning of the wound and putting trypsyme on it to help sluff off the dead tissue and regenerate new tissue.  The wound was too large to close, but should heal with daily treatment.

(kinda graphic...you may want to skip if you have a weak stomach)

((and I'll spare you the extracloseup shot))

 The brick red part is the dead tissue that will eventually come off and the new tissue will granulate in.  The lower part of the dead tissue is where the wire was still wrapped around the barbed wire.  I don't think I've seen this kind of injury from barbed wire, they usually have tissue damage to their wings and petagium (wing web).  I'm excited to see how this progresses and show it in photographs.

Miss Kitty on top, Chui (leopard in Swahili) is the little calico and the black-and-white one is temporarily Eastwood - the cat with no name.

Don't let the cuteness fool you...they are holy terrors. Promise.