I hope your vacation will be a hoot!🦉

I wish I had more info on it. If this is their patient #158, they just be a small clinic. (We're almost at 3500 for comparison.). Small places usually don't have much time to go into many details. I thought it was a bit overkill when we got a dedicated media person this year, but it's really helped us get much more informative posts done. The rehabber's personal time is near non-existent, so I'm sure the last thing they want to do is write about work a lot of the time! 😂

I hope that getting him a proper aviary will at least let him build muscle to fly, he could have been tethered if he was kept in someone's home. A SEO isn't huge, but it'd be about like tossing an (American) football around in the house. That's what I think of with their typical size and shape.

It's future will likely be determined by how grown it was when the original person kidnapped it and how long they kept it. They can test its hunting ability to see if it could be released.

Our GHO ambassador was a partial imprint, and they attempted to release him twice, if I remember his story correctly, but he kept deciding raiding the trash and yards of the neighborhood was going to be easier than hunting and they recaptured him before he could be hurt. It kinda makes him a poor ambassador for us, but we either keep him on our gravy train, try to find someone else that wants an owl that doesn't really cooperate, or euthanize him. So he works a few hours a year and spends the rest of the time glaring at us! We love him anyway though. We admire his attitude. 😊

I wish this young Shortie the best of luck though. I hope they find the best future for it. I'll keep my eyes peeled for updates.

Edit: I knew it should have looked for updates before I replied! 😅 Sounds like the person really screwed this owl over, but he should have an otherwise spoiled life now.

Commenter: So because he has imprinted on humans, is there no way of rehabilitation to be freed in the wild?

Rehab: Pretty much. He relies of people for food and would come up to any human begging. We can't fix this. Plus, he has a nonunion fracture in his wing that impedes flight. Had it been splinted in time it likely would have healed properly. So, he's not fully flighted and imprinted.

Commenter: he is so sweet. Can he stay with you guys or will he go somewhere else? Also, since he is now in human care, can he now bond more with humans? Like perch on an arm and be petted and loved on? I'm just curious.

Rehab: We need the letter from our vet and then USFW approval. Then we can officially add him to the education team. We definitely are providing him with enrichment.