We didn't know if he'd make through that first night. He just lay on the bottom of a large basket in a lump. Regardless, everyone was damn excited to have an owl in the house. Carrington offered him water every few hours with a small syringe. In the morning he'd perked up some.
The next day, I picked up a mouse at the pet store. How the owl handled this mouse would be a good indication of his condition. We dumped the mouse in the basket and closed the lid. Five minutes later we opened it. The owl had killed the mouse and was eating it. Hooray! -for the owl.
We had the owl for five nights. He ate a mouse a day, except at Thanksgiving when he got two within 24 hours. He usually ate the head and the upper torso. He ate all of the mouse on the second night. Carrington continued to offer him water several times a day with the syringe. He took water from it willingly. She tried a small bowl of water in the basket, but he dumped it almost instantly. The owl crapped a lot. I'd seen pictures of and read about owl lairs being scattered with the bones and skulls of their prey, so I was looking for that kind of stuff in the scat. It wasn't there. Perhaps pet shop mice are like domestic chickens, too immature for their bones to harden and thus easy to eat. Perhaps I was expecting too much spooky owl behavior from a small Screech Owl.
On the sixth night, we let him fly around in the bathroom and then in the bedroom. We couldn't see any damage to his wings and so considered it time to let him go. Who wants to let go of an owl? Not us. After some procrastination, we drove back to the spot where Carrington and Hannah found him. It's by a big field with a stand of trees at the edge. Prime owl habitat. We set out the basket and opened the lid. After the owl looked around for a minute, he was suddenly and silently gone.
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