CATEGORY: MRS. ANDERSON
PHOTO: BABY SCREECH OWL

Being in a wilderness ravine, we were blessed by a plethora of wildlife.  A favorite event that happened every spring was the hatching of baby screech owls.  When they left the nest we could hear them calling to each other from their nocturnal hiding places.  They sounded like ping pong balls bouncing along the floor:   poo           poo          poo         poo        poo      poo    poo  poo,poo,poo,poo,poo.

Tacked onto our kitchen was a glassed-in back porch with a back door. Since the door opened onto a little ledge in the side of the steep hill behind the house, and since there was no easy way to get to it from any humanly possible route from the exterior, we left the door unlatched so the cat (at this time we had only one) could get in and out during the night.

One night we heard a scuffling in the kitchen.  We investigated, but found nothing amiss.  Then we noticed, sitting on the back of a kitchen chair as if it were part of the decor, an almost-baby screech owl.  It was just sitting there quietly thinking things over.  It was about six inches long from head to tip of tail and almost that wide.  The cat came and looked up at it hungrily, asking us to give it back to her.  She had undoubtedly caught it and brought it into the house as she often did with mice and even once, an opossum.  We had gotten the opossum away from her in time to save its life, but this little screech owl had gotten away by itself.  Such a resourceful bird!  It was so adorable, it was tempting to let it become a permanent member of the family; it could have the kitchen as its abode and we would train the cat to bring it mice.  Yes!  What a brilliant idea!  Instead, we put it outside and locked the cat in.