France Profonde

A couple of years running, the chouette effrai living under our roof, has ejected one of her babies from the nest, too soon for it to fly off on its own wings. The runt maybe, or the over run. A couple of times, when they survive the fall, we have made the effort to rekindle these babies back to health. Once we were successful. The scared little peeping ball of plumes had the will to live.

It accepted the little nuggets of ham or raw chicken we proposed it. Lucien was particularly fearless, at 5, holding out scraps of meat, too yucky for his big sister to touch. He waited patiently for the little beak to rip it from his fingers. The littler we are, the more we identify with the vulnerable. For Lucien, this downed bird was another pet. He was the one who had tamed the unruly baby chicks when we had them, and he’s the one to put a frog or snake or grasshopper in a box and name it.

When we brought the reinvigorated baby owl back out to the point of its shoot days later, it succeeded in hopping out of the box, on the power of its desperate little wings. Mom and child screeched their greetings. Impossible to say if the clumsy mother was happy to see her offspring encore en vie. Mama did a fly over. Baby flapped its weak little wings and managed to escape any further meddling on our part. That beak is sharp.
It managed to hop into the neighboring rose bush, and scaled the branches. From that vantage point it surveyed its future runway. Mother bird made some taunting and or encouraging sounds and occasionally swooped in to admonish baby to be careful, or otherwise, to get lost. Again it is hard to comprehend the pronouncements of a bird whose very name predicts its fowl mood. (Wow two puns in one)

In any case, baby owl did eventually venture out. It flapped and flapped hopped and flopped and dropped right down onto the stone terrace. But it managed to scramble back up to its rosebush perch to contemplate its next move. We observed it when we could over the course of that afternoon and evening, the days still short that early spring. I was at work and had to catch up with its progress from the kids pictures. Not currently available. It was still there though when I got home, shortly before dark. It was fascinating to see it launch and flap only to gain a rung or grip on a larger branch. It slowly moved into the Lilac bush and on to higher perches. And then, unbeknownst to us, at some time in the night, it flew off. Or so we presume. There were no feathers found to attest to its failure or to its capture. It was just gone leaving our dame blanche alone in her haunt.