Big Things with Wings (Encore)

8/29/2004 You may remember the incident a couple of years ago with the possum. This tops that. Our guinea fowl were making a real racket just before dawn. I crawled out of bed in my night shirt, went to the door and yelled for them to shut up. Usually that will end the racket. This time it didn't. So I put on my sandals which were beside the door and went outside. Then I hear a real ruckus coming from the chicken house. Unarmed and stupidly fearless I opened the chicken house door only to have the biggest pair of wings I have EVER seen fly past my eyes as my exposed toes stumble over a dead chicken on the floor. Oh, Crap. My eyes have adjusted to the near dawn light and I can tell this is a bird to be reckoned with as he flies into the chicken wire enclosing the chicken house. My first thought was, "I wonder where Rick put my 22 rifle?" then, realizing that the walls on the east side are metal I knew it didn't matter because I couldn't use it anyway. Okay, here is a broom handle which was previously a perch for chickens-now a weapon, I hope. The bird is now hanging upside down on the chicken wire so I whack it in the head. He looks at me with those big owl eyes and hisses. The broom handle is way too small for this job. I go out of the chicken house and into the goat pen, fumbling in the breaking light to find the log we use for cracking through ice in the winter. Go back into the chicken house hoping the stupid bird has found its way out the door by now. No such luck. He is hanging from wire on the opposite wall. I go back outside the house thinking "If I had a knife I could just stab the stupid thing through the wire." No knife. Back inside I pick up the log once again and toss it on the bird. He falls to the ground, still staring back at me. I pick up another small board and hit him with that. No effect. Now a brick. No effect...especially since it didn't land anywhere close to him. Pick up the broomstick again. Whack him a couple of times. His wing is outstretched-possibly broken and he is lying on the ground still staring at me. There is no way I'm touching this bird. Back out into the morning twilight I go to retrieve a large yellow bucket. Bringing the bucket into the chicken house, I drop it over the bird and slide bucket and bird out into the pen and off to get ready for the farmers' market goes Jo. That afternoon we moved the bucket (still upside down) into the shade of the barn. As we moved the bucket his tail stuck out the bottom edge. When we stopped moving the bucket, the tail moved back under the bucket. Obviously he is not dead. Not willing to be exposed to this creature again, we called the wildlife people. By the time they got there the owl had been under the bucket long enough to recover and it's wing was not broken. The game warden took the bucket off and the owl flew away. It has not been back in the chicken house and we haven't had anymore dead chickens. He may have been the one who stole my Patches cat however. I hope he learned his lesson. Don't mess with Prairie House! Post Script: A month or so after this was written we found a dead owl who had nearly decapitated himself on the electric pole guy wire. We shed no tears.