Other Animals

 

Here are the stories of the other animals we rescued in Goa. I put all of them on this page as there are not as many things to say as with the cats and dogs.

 

The baby Owl

We used to live in a rental house with a big garden in 2006. The landlord was doing some work in the garden, and people who are working outside start early in Goa because of the heat. So, one morning I got up, and the workers were already at the task. I was looking at them from the verandah when I notice that there were a baby owl on the ground. So, I approached and I saw that they had tied one leg of the baby owl with a rope to a coconut tree. I understood that the baby fell from its nest. So, I told my children about it, and my son who was 15 y.o at the time and already a good photographer took some pictures of the bird. This is the only one left that I could find.

picture

I put the baby owl in one of the cages in which the cats traveled to India on the verandah of the house, and bought some chicken meat that we gave him and that he really appreciated. The first night, we were happily surprised to see both of his (or her) parents on the railing of the gallery, and we tried that night to put the baby owl on the branch of a tree in the garden, but it didn’t work out, so we brought him back in the cage where he slept. He stayed like this a week or so, and every night, his parents were coming on the gallery’s railing or on a tree close by, and eventually, after putting him again on the branch of a tree, he managed to stay there, and next day he was back with his parents.

Luckily, he was quite big when we found him, so he could survive. We saw them a couple of times after that, and months later, an adult owl came to us and I was wondering if it was him or her.

 

The young eagle

One day, we heard some activity at the back of our property, and my daughter and I saw 2 young boys with a wooden stick, trying to catch a young eagle. He was not a baby, but he couldn’t fly. We told the kids that we would take the bird, as they were afraid of him, and Mina, my daughter, who is really at ease with animals, took him, and we put him in the large living room that we were not using.

We put him on a wooden empty stand for the clothes. He was quite wild, but he was accepting his new temporary home and our food. I searched online specialists in eagles in Goa and found a bird center in North Goa that I called. The man couldn’t really help and we had to keep the bird.

We were feeding him with chicken and beef. He was taking the pieces roughly, was taking them with his beak and was securing them with his talons on the stand, and was tearing apart the piece to eat it. And he liked to eat! He was not aggressive with us, but was showing his distance. But we could carry him on our arm and with my daughter, Mina, we took several pictures.

His stay here has been really messy! Eagles shit a lot!! We put newspapers pages down to protect the floor, and we had to change it often. The ceiling is high, about 3,50 to 4 meters, so he was flying sometimes from the stand to a shelf or the daybed. These birds are so large when their wings are deployed! The room was a mess! We tried several times to let him go and fly, but it didn’t work for several weeks, and one day, it worked!

That day, he was ready to fly without falling like a stone on the ground. It was at the end of a day. He first went on the roof, and flew on different parts of it, and then he went straight up to a coconut tree. And he started to call. And his call has been heard. His mother? Anyhow, another eagle started to circle around the coconut tree where he was, and we could hear them communicating. But dusk was coming and soon, we couldn’t see anything, but I think the family was reunited.

I often go on the front balcao to sip my tea, and I see eagles coming and going from the tops of some coconuts trees where they have their nests. Majestic birds, they fly so high!