Hoo Are You?

Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo. The Disneyfication of Britain is complete. They are now trying to rescue plastic owls. No, really, they are.

Perhaps it was the startled look on its face. Or maybe the fact it was frozen with fear.
But when an RSPCA officer was called out to investigate an owl that had been perched on a telegraph pole for days, she was so concerned she called the fire brigade.
It was only as a crew were about to deploy their aerial platform ladder to pluck the poor bird to safety that residents realised what was happening and rushed over to tell them it was a plastic decoy.

The residents of the neighborhood are having a pretty good laugh at the expense of the RSPCA and the local fire brigade. The really stupid part of this story? This gem:

Spokeswoman Klare Kennett said: ‘It is not the first time we have been called to rescue an animal that isn’t real but we’d rather be safe than sorry.’

A number of years ago, I was called to take some pictures of a snowy owl that had taken up residence for a time at a plant I was working at. Obviously, I had to take the pictures during the day. So I went out with my longest telephoto lens on my Nikon 35mm camera and tried to get a good shot of this bird who had perched on a light pole. I tried from a number of different places around the site, But just could not get one that I thought would be good enough. I finally went outside the fenced area and up a hill and got a good vantage point. Those shots came out. (The others were, as I had suspected they would be, not very good.) This whole process probably took the better part of an hour and a half, maybe a bit more.

And that owl never once moved. Nary a twitch. Remember, I was shooting in daylight.

I’m pretty sure that owl was asleep.