Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Wednesday! Wednesday! Find A Home For Our Dead Feathered Friendsday!

So.

About the little owl that I recently acquired.

I did a bit of research and I am pretty sure that it is a Saw-whet owl.

Looky here...


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Isn't that just about the cutest little raptor you ever did see?

Now, that's not the actual owl. Mine is more ... frosty.


And!


Notice what a nice accessory it is for a Christmas trees.

Well, I am sad to say that I am not going to be able to keep the owl after all.

After giving it some thought I figured I should heed the warnings in the comments and check into this a bit more. So, I called the Game Commission and found out that, unless I am an educator or the representative of a museum, I would not be able to obtain the proper permit to keep a carcass that I found along the side of the road. And, just because I have a lot of old things in my house - like knob and tube wiring - it doesn't necessarily qualify as a museum.

I get the jist of why and all that but, really, I think if you're lucky enough to find a dead owl you should be able to get it mounted for your Christmas tree.

But! Because I am a law abiding citizen (and because taxidermy is not a hobby I can afford to divert my time into right now), I am giving the owl to a teacher friend of mine. I emailed her today when I got off the phone with the Commission and she called me back right away. Apparently it was her planning period.

Anyway, I told her about how I came to be in possession of wildlife contraband and asked if she would be interested in it. She was, as I expected, pretty excited about it.

I asked her if she wanted to stop by on her way home from school but she had a whole lot of errands to run and figured she'd be too tired to stop. Then I asked her if she had a freezer at school and she told me that she has one in her classroom. So I said I would just send it in with my daughter.

Here's how that conversation went...

Me: Do you have much time between when you get to school and when you have to get to homeroom?
Daughter: Well, I usually pick up my friend so not really. Why?
Me: Well, can you call your friend and see if maybe you could leave a little earlier tomorrow? I was wondering if you could take a dead owl in for Mrs. W. and give it to her before homeroom.
Daughter: Ok, just remind me in the morning.

That's it.

I'm not sure if I should worry that my asking my daughter to deliver a dead owl doesn't even raise an eyebrow. It seems as though my children have become completely immune to the bizarre.

For instance, if one of them would have come home at about 2 o'clock this afternoon, they would have found a goat in the utility tub of our laundry room. (Don't ask - it's a long story and it involves tapeworms.)

These are the kinds of things they are subjected to on a daily basis.

So ... I don't know. Hopefully it will help them deal with the big ol' world.


***

Now! For my Best Of _____ Award!

I am going to give two.

First.

Best Teacher Award goes to my friend, Roseann, who has so graciously agreed to give my little owl a loving home. She is also going to name it after my husband.

While discussing the owl, she offered to name it after me. Or hubby. I asked her if there was an easy way to tell you know, gender-wise, what it should be named. She said it's pretty diffucult and got into the whole description as to why.

Then I suggested that since I found him dead along the side of the road, one might conjecture that it was a bit of a reckless owl.

So hubby's name it is.

And I'm hoping that maybe some year he can come "visit" our Christmas tree.


Second.

The Best Big Sister A Gal Could Ever Want Award goes to ...

My big sister. Because she is the coolest. She's smart and witty and one heck of a writer. She's a great mom. She's got a kick-butt sense of humor and one of the few people who will go into hysterics with me just by letting those balloon-animal balloons go flying around a room. She can finish my sentences and vice versa, even though we don't get to see each other very often.

She is the best!

So read her blog! Clean her house! Buy her Frangelico!

Give it up for ma sistuh'!

Woot! Woot! Hoot!


This Post was brought to you by NaBloPoMo and Perrier.

7 comments:

josetteplank.com said...

Oh you!

And here I am wondering how I can give you another ROFL Award seeing as I've given you one already and your owl posts have me in stitches!

Hey! If anyone wants to give my seestor a ROFL award for November, contact this lady here:

ROFL AWARD

Anonymous said...

I think you're both witty! And congratulations on finding a home for your dead owl.

Peggy Sez.. said...

I have an owl skeleton in a box..What kind of fun..uh..I mean trouble can I get into? Oh and btw are you related to the Litte Ceasars pizza guy?(Like you haven't heard THAT before)

steph said...

oh, i think kids ar totally immune to all that stuff -- they bring me in all kinds of interesting things!!

Anonymous said...

hey anne, was the owl found near your house? remember i heard one on dead celebrity night while i was waiting in your kitchen. ken

anne said...

Sis - Aw shucks... I don't think I could STAND another award!

prof. j - Thank you and thank you.

Peggy - You know, the Game Commission web-site metioned that you couldn't even have feathers from a protected bird. So I would probably put that skeleton in a zip-lock, lable it "Chicken bones - soup" and keep it in the freezer.

steph - You are probably right. I think kids kinds of revel in the weird. To a limit, I suppose.

ken - Yes! He almost right at the end of my driveway. I think the little guy lived down near the creek on the other side of the road.

CampHillGirl said...

I was just randomly mulling through blogs and came over from Jozet's. This made me laugh, and remember...

My dad found some kind of wonderful big bird dead down by the creek that ran through our property. And it was in wonderful shape, so he decided to send it in to a science teacher at school as well. And he sent it in through my brother (just as you did). Unfortunately, my brother forgot exactly which teacher he was supposed to bring it in to (we went to a very large high school) and asked a couple of random (non-science) teachers if they were expecting a dead bird from his dad. They gave him peculiar looks and made some comments that made him decide to evade the entire pass-off altogether, so he stuffed the poor bird into his (probably extremely) messy locker and promptly dismissed the subject from all future thought. Until his lockermate asked him a week or so later (when they happened to meet at the locker) "What is in here that stinks so badly?!" I'm sure your daughter is much more responsible.