Spook and the scare.

I had a bit of a scare the other day;  my long-eared owl Spook decided all of a sudden to become dead.

I have kept and flown many species of raptors over the years and I have to admit that my least favourite was always the owls. They just never done it for me, give me a stooping falcon or a soaring Harris-hawk any day. I just never saw the attraction that some folk have with owls, just as I never saw the attraction that some people have for snakes and piranha fish; creatures that just sit there and stare back at me was never really my cup of tea.

But I do have an interest in our own Irish native species of flying predators, whether diurnal or nocturnal. But that’s not a good enough reason either; I just like this little guy, I put him out in the morning, feed him during the day and put him in at night. But since I opened the Bird of Prey Centre he has been a major attraction with the public, kids and adults alike love to handle him and they are more than welcome to as he takes it all in his stride. I haven’t flown him as yet but my daughter has done some work with him on the creance (a strange word that I cannot find the root of) meaning a long training line used for safety just before a bird is flown free.

Anyway back to his little episode. I have a couple of small raptors and during the recent bad weather I have been watching them like a hawk and taking them indoors at night when the temperatures plummeted to scary minuses. We also have a little Boobook owl from Australasia and a European Kestrel which between the three of them don’t weigh more than a bag of sugar.

As I mentioned earlier, a few days ago Spook decided to become dead. Olwyn; our little Boobook owl was off colour and was given extra food in the form of mice and hamsters to make sure he got through the cold spell in one piece. But Spook never showed signs of being down in condition. This is a major problem with birds and one of the reasons there are a million dog and cat vets out there for every one vet specialising in birds. Dogs, cats and humans look sick when they are, but birds are covered in feathers which camouflage any illness until the very last minute or beyond.  Spook showed no signs of being down in condition until my Fabulous Assistant picked him up one morning and I glanced over and saw him use his wing to balance himself on her glove. He seemed alright but a bird that drops his wing as a means of balancing instead of his usual quick flap and a quick hop to the glove was a sign of concern. I took him on my fist then and saw that something was definitely amiss.

I suspected either a slow loss of condition, but he had been given extra food and should have been alright. Or, worst case scenario, Aspergillosis. Now if you want to scare a human, diagnose cancer and shout the C word at them, but if you want to scare a bird of prey there is very little scarier than Asper, as it is lovingly know as. It is a fungal infection of the air sacs and lungs and I won’t bore you with the details but if you ever find yourself covered in feathers and your lungs full of Aspergillosis spores, well, as they say in the bible; may god have mercy on your soul.

I missed the vet and connected to the Inter-web the first chance I got to find out more and quickly discovered that if Spook was a two hundred pound ostrich and the disease was in its initial stages I might have had some chance. But Spook only weighed nine ounces and was already showing signs of being in serious trouble.

As I mentioned earlier I like the little guy and gave him what I reckoned was his last feed as I placed him on a towel in a dark box by the fireside. As bedtime called he could not even stand and looked up with those big super-model eyes, eyelashes blinking as his life eked away.

Life is tough and I have been through this many times. I have lost too many people and too many pets, dogs and birds, companions all, both human and not. If Spook was dead in the morning, well ………… so be it.

Next morning I put the kettle on before I picked up his dead body. Always best to face tea before Rigor Mortis. But there he was looking up, fluttering his eyelashes like Kate Moss. But all that day he didn’t eat and it was not until that night that I decided to force feed him to make sure he had food in his stomach. Most birds have a crop; a bag between their mouths and their stomach that stores food as digestion takes place. But owls don’t have this storage facility and as I tried to put food past his gagging point where he needed to swallow it he took great pains to work it from the depths of his belly and successfully threw it all back up again. I eventually went to bed in despair and tossed a couple of day old chicks into his box as an afterthought.

Next morning I checked him before putting on the kettle and there he was, sitting on his towel, looking up at me and pretending nothing was wrong. And beside him was a pellet made from the waste bits of the day-old-chicks that he had consumed sometime during the night.

Anyway, it turned out not to be Aspergillosis as he is still alive. And as I tap away on my keyboard now he is sitting on the back of my chair, hopefully happy as the proverbial Larry. He is preening himself and I noticed he just crapped all over my lap-top case.

One of these days I will get sense, straighten out my life and take up a proper career without these stresses and worries.

Wish me luck…….

Tom