When I was a wee lad......Just up the street past the cemetary was Crossetts' Creek.....Which Started from a natural spring pond up on the Scully chicken farm...meandered across Christiano's land then crossed under Crossett Road onto the Malony Tenant Farm owned by the Wadsworths....then meandered thrhough the Wadsworth Homestead Farm till it crossed under RT63 and becomes FALL BROOK....an old indian encampment raided by Boyd and Parker where they slaughtered all the women and children while the men were out hunting :-(

ANYWAY......one day I was out woodchuck hunting with Robin Maloney the youngest son and we were way back up in the corner of crossetts Creek by the cliffs and I spotted a short eared owl killing a squirell :-)

Robin was off the otherside of the field so I sat down to watch through my scope......and the owl flew with the dead squirell up to a good sized branch where another owl came along to help cut up this squirell and neatly lay pieces of it on the branch.........about this time Robin comes along......an I say HEY COME'RE AN CHECK THIS OUT........so we both sat n watched......AND THEN.......one of the owls picked up a stip of meat and flew to a nest over in the cliff that had three babies in it

SO.......we got a bright idea (not really) and decided that we could borrow Robins' DADS block n tackle.......go down over the side of the cliff and get a baby owl.......and trian it like a hawk :-)

we were only gonna take one

and guess who got to hang over the cliff (Robin was bigger and more muscular from a life of farm work so he got to run the block n tackle :-I

BUT GUESS WHAT..........even though we had anticipated mommy n daddy owl coming after us (Robin had a semi-automatic shotgun he could fire one handed and we weren't gonna shoot mom n dad.....we thought the noise would scare em off.........BUT WE THOUGHT WRONG :-O

SHORT EARED OWLS WILL FIGHT TO THE DEATH TO PROTECT THIER BABIES :-O

and they got SHARP NASTY TALONS and wingspans of better n 3 feet

I remember quit clearly yelling "PULL ME UP..PULL ME UP"

Let me clue you now......How those Owls felt about those babies :-I

THAT'S HOW I FEEL ABOUT MY GRANDCHILDREN AND THE SOUL OF HUMANITY ;-)