popplers

Megascops asio

I've been meaning to finish this post for a while now, but it's been pretty busy of late. At any rate… Three weeks ago, we drove up to New Hampshire to have dinner and play games with Sean (Wii!). When we finally headed for home, it was after 1 a.m.; the roads were still wet and the frogs were out in force. I don't know if this is just a New England thing, but whenever it rains, the frogs seem to love hanging out on the roads. It's nerve-wracking trying to avoid the little guys. To the casual observer, I'm sure it seems like the driver is drunk, high, or both. "No, offisher, I swear— there were frogs all over the road."

So, Chris was behind the wheel of the S2000, playing Reverse Frogger. It was pleasantly cool and not actively raining, so we had the top down. Suddenly, there was a white flash and this owl came swooping down out of the sky. Here's where my memory of the incident gets jumbled. I know I gasped. Chris said he hit the horn and swerved to the right to avoid the owl, but I didn't hear anything. Afterward, he said that he felt really silly, honking at an owl for "cutting him off".

The car hit the owl. Chris pulled over and I got out of the car to check on the little guy. It was too dark to see much, so I asked Chris to turn the car around. The headlights provided plenty of light, and I could see that the owl was flat on his back in the road. He blinked his eyes, and I was struck by how large and yellow they were. I had thought that I'd pick him up and take him to Tufts Veterinary. But as he lay there, clenching and unclenching his talons, I thought better of that.

I went back to the car to grab a jacket, in the hopes that I could wrap him up in that. Chris said something about how he thought it was too late— that the little guy was a goner. "He's still moving," I said, and headed back to the owl. As I was leaning over him, trying to figure out how to execute my cunning plan, the owl suddenly flapped his wings and righted himself. So much for being a goner, I thought.

There was a car coming from the other direction. Chris said that I should try to shoo the owl away from the yellow line, so that he didn't get spooked or hit again. I draped my jacket around him and tried to herd him toward the side of the road. He moved forward a little, then flapped and flew about 50 feet, landing on the verge. At that point, I figured that he must be reasonably well; he had stood up, and he had managed to fly. He probably had at least a mild concussion, but hopefully he'd recover. I got back in the car and Chris drove home, extremely slowly, while trying to avoid the amphibian multitudes out celebrating.

Given that this is actually the second time that Chris has hit an owl, we decided that there must be a huge untapped market for additional devices to scare away animals from automobiles and humans (like deer whistles or bear bells). We haven't patented any of these, but we're looking for engineers interested in inventing owl chimes, frog horns, or badgeridoos.

When we got home, we decided that the owl must have been an Eastern Screech-Owl (Megascops asio), gray morph. So drive carefully out there— the owl that you save may be your own. Or something. As a side note, Slipping on Owls would totally be a great name for a band.

Posted by rv at September 29, 2007 11:32 AM to science!