Sunday, April 18, 2010

Alf's Almost Snack


For those of you who hadn’t heard, we lost our beloved Alf, the world’s most awesome red screech owl, at the end of December. When you work with as many animals as we do at CLAWS, especially doing rehab, there are a lot of losses. They are never easy, but some are harder than others. Alf’s loss has been one of the hardest. He was an amazing little owl. He would be glaring at me right now for daring to use such an adjective (the “little”, not the amazing…he quite liked that one).

To help Kindra with the CLAWS Blog, I thought I’d share one of my favorite Alf stories with you. It was during rehab season and Kindra and Vinny were feeding a batch of baby squirrels (very small, hairless little things). I was over visiting and had Alf perched on my shoulder. The squirrels were in a large critter keeper (a large clear plastic box with a special lid that allows airflow) and I noticed Alf was staring at it like people check out the lobster tank at a restaurant.

He was observing Vinny very intently as he took out each little squirrel to feed it with a syringe. I started joking around telling Alf that I would try to acquire him one. Kindra expressly forbid me. While we were talking, one of the house cats snuck into the kitchen. In his haste to get the cat out of the kitchen, Vinny unthinkingly hands me the baby squirrel he was feeding. Alf immediately perks up like “Yes! We did it! We have a squirrel!” Then Kindra turns into Kwai Chang Caine (snatch the pebble from my hand grasshopper) and snatches that squirrel from me. The look on Alf’s face clearly said, “You ‘owl expletive deleted’! That was mine!”

Kindra then gave Vinny a lecture on why you don’t give a mind-controlled servant of a screech owl a tiny baby squirrel!


Lori

Alf's Devoted Servant

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