Happy Earth Day...

Jeez...I can't even remember the last time I posted a blog. I should probably go back to make sure I'm not repeating myself, but I'm just gonna wing it and see what happens.

I think the last time I reached out to you, little Mottley Hoo, the crippled baby chicken, was due for surgery to try to repair her bad tendon. Dr. Martinez, bless him, did his best, but the surgery wasn't successful and so we had to put her down. A chicken with only one good leg is no good...

Here is Dr. Martinez contemplating his surgical approach for Miss Mott

Nursing the surgery site

This here is the dearly departed Miss Mott's clutchmate, Tina Turner

They go from this...

To THIS!

My chicky-poodles are highly intelligent and well read...

And housebroken...for the most part, anyway. What do you do when two eggs escape from the fridge without their parachutes? You bring in a chicken to mop up. "Clean up on aisle 3!"

But they learn bad habits from the cats... Here is Face stealing the fish food, right in front of me. He doesn't even try to sneak around!

So Micheal got this bright idea...she's a bad chicken!

Bill has been finally been accepted by the other cats. Heck, he even looks like them!

He puts the 'purr' in purrsonality! And if I let their bowl get empty...does he complain? Heck no! He just wanders over to the all-you-can-eat buffet!

Could THIS be why it takes me forever to type something?

And of course...he thinks everything's funny...because it IS!

This here is Lumpy, a baby-baby Barred owl, whose parents took over a squirrel's nest, which isn't a very good idea if you wish to propagate your species. Baby Lumpy fell out of the bottom of said nest and two very nice people, Ronnie and Libby, came to his rescue and brought him over to the house. Since he's so small, I am using the puppet to ghost feed, so he won't imprint on me and will use operant conditioning techniques (sounds brilliant, doesn't it? :) so that when he's released, he will hang around to feed while he figures out things on his own. He's a cutie! And a piggie...he's putting away about 6 mice a day!

Here is the newest addition to the aviary at the Wild House of HawkTalk...a European barn owl. This bird was captive bred over at the Avian conservation Center in Charleston and I would like to thank Chris and Robert for donating their time and effort to fly over to collect him for me on April 8th. This pic was taken about 2 weeks later. He looks like one of those funny sheeps in the cartoons, doesn't he?

He didn't want to eat at first and I was very worried about the little fellow, but after putting an SOS out on Facebook, a nice man from the Republic of Macedonia (wherever THAT is) suggested another feeding technique which worked like a dream. Little Butter Bean is doing great and thriving. It's so much fun to be able to hand raise one and to interact with him has been a blast. This is pretty much what my desk looks like lately...but that's ok, I'm a happy bird mom!

You mean THIS mouse, momma?

I know things are tough for everyone right now and it's getting down right scary, but even a little Mouse Money would go a long way for us. Thanks for taking the time to read my blog and I hope you have a wonderful weekend....m.