Around 8 pm on the unseasonably warm night of Tuesday, December 2, Chelsey Hitt of Oak Bluffs and her boyfriend, Daniel Kelleher, were driving along Wing Road in Oak Bluffs when they saw a young eastern screech owl foundering in the road.
“It was right by the intersection of Wing Road and Pheasant [Lane],” Ms. Hitt told The Times. “We stopped and went back to help it. We shooed him along and walked next to him until he was away from the road. We don’t know anything about owls so we weren’t sure what to do. Some people came out of their house and told us to call Gus Ben David. We didn’t get an answer. We tried animal control and everybody we could think of. We called the Com Center and they told us to call Felix Neck and we got a machine there too. We had to get going, so I posted his picture on Islanders Talk,” she said.
Islanders Talk is a Facebook page where Islanders, after being accepted to the closed group, post breaking local news, ask for recommendations, or just vent about local issues.
Owl EMT
“I got home from work and sat down at my computer and the Islanders Talk page was up and this wounded owl [message] had just been posted,” Zachary Sweeney told The Times at his Oak Bluffs home. “Once I heard about it, I couldn’t just leave it there. I’d rescued an owl before, so I got a box and a flashlight and some leather gloves and headed out.”
The chances of finding a small, umber-colored owl on ground covered with brown leaves, in the dark, were not good.
“At first I thought he must have flown off,” Mr. Sweeney said. “I was about to give up but fortunately he turned at the right second and I caught the glare off his eye. He was probably hiding under leaves for protection. He was easy pickings for a skunk or a cat or a stray dog.”
Mr. Sweeney hypothesized that the winter moth bloom that night played a role in the owl’s losing battle with a car.
“The winter moths were out big time that night. Screech owls eat rats and mice but they eat a lot of insects because of their size — they only get to be nine inches at the most. He was probably going for some dinner and got hit.”
As Mr. Sweeney recounted the previous 48 hours for The Times, the statue-still raptor, barely bigger than a coffee can, impassively watched from a perch Mr. Sweeney built for it in his living room, improvised out of a beach plum branch. The perch afforded the owl a good view of a 55 gallon saltwater fish tank, where clownfish, lemon peel, tomato clowns, a hawkfish, and a shy lobster reside.
The bed for Beau, Mr. Sweeney’s golden retriever puppy, lay next to the aquarium. Elsewhere in the living room, a pineapple bush, a hibiscus, a Christmas cactus, various bonsai trees, a weeping cypress, a ficus plant and an anthurium plant, soaked in the afternoon sun. The picture window afforded views of some of the many bird feeders and birdhouses that encircle the house. There was no TV.
“I like watching my animals, and I have a lot of plants, I’m just a weirdo I guess,” Mr. Sweeney said with a shrug.
Mr. Sweeney demonstrated an easy rapport with the wounded bird. He made a knocking sound, clicking his tongue off the roof of his mouth, and the owl responded in a strikingly similar sound and cadence. “He hasn’t tried to fly yet,” Mr. Sweeney said. “He’s been taking water from an eyedropper, which is a good sign. I fed him some chicken but the mouse was too big.”
Mr. Sweeney extended his hand and the owl climbed on without hesitation. “They’re wicked smart animals,” he said, gently stroking the owl’s head with the back of his index finger. “They don’t have many predators around here. I don’t know if that’s why they’re so docile, but the other one was the same way,” Mr. Sweeney said, recalling his first owl rescue in 2005. “I got him in a wicked snow storm. He’d been hit by a car as well.”
Mr. Sweeney attributed his love of nature to his grandparents. “They live in Chilmark and growing up I spent a lot of time there,” he said. “I’d take off into the woods and come back six hours later and they’d never worry.”
Mr. Sweeney made his first animal rescue in high school, when he came to the aid of an addled Bohemian waxwing. When he took the bird to Felix Neck, it turned out the bird was not injured, but drunk from eating fermented grapes. Since then, Mr. Sweeney has cared for a menagerie of wounded and orphaned animals. This summer he adopted five orphaned baby skunks that lived under his neighbor’s house. “I could pick them up and feed them, they were really cool,” he said. “The woman that has the beauty parlor next door told me that when she went to her car the other night there were five skunks out there,” he said laughing. “That wasn’t my intention, but, oh well.”
Raptor rehab
The morning after the rescue, Mr. Sweeney set about finding a veterinarian. “I posted an update [on Islanders Talk] first thing and started making some calls,” he said. “Pretty soon, a lot of people were making calls. Michelle Katz gave me a couple more leads, which led to the New England Wildlife Center, and they agreed to take him. Michelle was already going off Island on the first boat the next day, so she said she’d drop him off. The whole thing was a community effort: It was really cool how it came together.”
Mr. Sweeney acknowledged there was some sharp criticism from some people who thought that he was domesticating wild animals. “Now he’ll be receiving the help he needs. No more negative feedback, and hopefully everyone is happy to know the owl has been given to the people who could help him best. It’s too bad there’s not a place on Island that can do this. There’s a lot more wildlife out there than people realize.”
As of Wednesday morning, the owl was recovering at the New England Wildlife Center (NEWC). Dr. Gary Mertz, staff veterinarian told The Times there are two breaks in the left wing which can possibly be fixed with a cast or a surgically placed pin, but the bird’s flight potential remains up in the air at this time.
More information about how to help wounded animals, and when not to help them, can be found at the NEWC website, wildlife-education-center.com, on the center’s Facebook page, or by calling 781-682-4878.