i've been asked to post my latest story so here goes. saturday morning just as we were going out our back door to take our frozen parent barn owl bodies to warner park nature center to be mounted for education and training, our registered male norwegian forest cat (they are GREAT hunters) jumped up on our breakfast bar and lunged toward the top of the open (screened) window and i saw his target-a hummingbird frantically trying to escape from a recently constructed huge orb weaver web. i ran outside and grabbed the bird (before the spider did) and pulled him out of the web. i started picking the strings of web from his body and was amazed at the tensile strength of the webbing-also it's stickiness. i picked and picked for about 3 minutes as it unwound from his body. the bird of course was basically terrified at being held but quickly gave up and relaxed (too tired or maybe it even realized i was trying to help and it couldn't possibly accomplish that task alone) and just sat in my hands. when i was pretty sure i had it all off, i set it on the table to fly away and it made that attempt but just flopped all around. i picked it up again (i didn't seem to mind at all this time-stopped all that chirping and flapping) and started handpicking at it again. finally after another 5 minutes or so of fully spreading it's wings feathers, i had all the sticky, wirelike thread off that i could find. i set him on the table again and thank goodness, away he flew like nothing ever had happened. i feel certain i had saved his little life and that made me feel extremely good so then we were back to our sad task of taking our beautiful barn owl friends to their final resting place. i'm sure tho had we not been about to leave to take the bodies away, i'd not have found the hummingbird in time so maybe everything DOES happen for a reason however i'm still so very sad to lose our barn owls. jan donaldson watertown, TN se wilson county
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