Oro Valley’s newest residents

 So what is wrong with PEOPLE? We have a Great Horned Owl living in the top of a saguaro with her two babies at the end of our cul-de-sac. Wow, hard to believe that she took up residency here in our little community. She probably should have chosen the gated community just a tick down the road. She is the object of massive attention from the neighborhood, media and passersby. She doesn’t seem to mind most of the time and nearly everyone has been respectful until yesterday. Some well-meaning (I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt) numbskull decided that the owl family who are exposed to the hot afternoon sunshine (averaging in the high 80’s lately) needed shelter. Somehow the daredevil numbskull ascended to the top of the prickly saguaro (20 +/- feet) with cardboard and duct tape and made a tacky screen sticking up above the west side of the cactus. What? Like Great Horned Owls haven’t been making nests in the desert cactus for, oh, let’s say a few hundred years? They need a not-quite-bright person to assist? Now the saguaro looks like a shanty town high-rise and the momma owl looks down very disdainfully on the gentry below. Fortunately, she has accepted the addition for the time being but she is out scouting and I can just hear her telling her progeny that they will soon move to a classier neighborhood.

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/great-horned-owl/

Leave a comment