Wesley

I have several weeks of posts queued but felt compelled to make a special “real-time” post tonight. Today my favorite raptor ever has died due to cancer and I’m devastated. Wesley the barn owl has been at Sulphur Creek since he was a first-year owl. He turned 4 years old this year. He got sick a couple of weeks ago and it took a while for us to have a diagnosis, but it was confirmed to be cancer today. Because he was so young, I’m especially shocked and upset, but the main reason I’m grieving so much is he was simply an AWESOME animal.

Wesley was a very special owl. All of the resident education animals at Sulphur Creek (and in general, all wildlife facilities in the state) are non-releasable back into the wild. Wesley was with us not due to any physical injury but because he was imprinted on humans. This means he identified as a human instead of as a barn owl. One of the reasons imprinted animals can’t be released is because owls like Wesley will defend their territory not against other barn owls, but against humans. In fact, Wesley had to be safely trapped in his nest box before volunteers were allowed to enter his enclosure to clean and feed because he was likely to land on them, whereas his non-imprinted roommate barn owl just ignores humans in the enclosure. Wes never showed any signs of aggression outside his enclosure, but his enclosure was HIS home and he had a right to defend it. Imagine, however, what would happen if Wes had attacked random humans for standing under “his” tree out in the wild.

Other than his proclivity for defending his territory from “fellow” humans, Wesley was a raptor handler’s dream. Birds display varying degrees of comfort being on the glove, but Wesley was so comfortable with it that he would routinely just fall asleep standing on your fist, surrounded by 30 excitable school kids. I loved taking Wesley out because he was no work at all for me and everyone that saw him was mesmerized. Wes had real charisma (when he was awake, haha). I’m extremely uncomfortable with public speaking, but when I held Wesley, he was so calm and the audience so captivated by him, that I had no trouble at all speaking about him. I loved talking about how sad it was he couldn’t be released (DO NOT “ADOPT” BABY WILDLIFE AND TRY TO RAISE IT), but what a great education ambassador he was. I never felt nervous presenting Wesley because he was just so freakin’ great and everyone knew it.

I love all the education animals at Sulphur Creek, but of course you end up with favorites. Wesley ended up as just about everyone’s favorite. I went in to say a final goodbye to Wesley today. I thanked him for all the lives he had touched and the service he had performed for us. I asked him to step up onto a glove for me a final time and he obliged, then closed his eyes and drifted off. Just like old times, except with me crying. I wish I had some better photos of Wes, but I never saw this coming – I figured I had years ahead of me to take pictures of him. All I have are some photos of me handling him in which I look truly terrible – I figured I’d just keep getting Mark to photograph me every time he was at a program I handled Wesley for and eventually he’d take a decent one – so please don’t look at me in these and instead focus on beautiful, wonderful Wes. He will be very, very much missed.