Advocate suspects owl died after eating poisoned rodent
SASKATOON A dead great horned owl with blood around its beak is prompting a warning from a wildlife rescue group in Saskatoon.
Living Sky Wildlife Rehabilitation is asking people not to put out poison for rodents.
The group’s executive director, Jan Shadick, said she suspects the owl ate a mouse or rat that had ingested poison. It was otherwise in perfect shape, fat and healthy.
“I just think, what could leave an animal in beautiful physical condition but dead?” she said.
The type of poison typically used to exterminate mice and rats is an anti-clotting agent that causes internal bleeding, Shadick noted, which could explain the blood around the owl’s mouth.
“And so (the internal bleeding) is a very painful and horrible death for the rodent. And anything that eats the rodent will also experience the same effects from the poison,” she said.
That includes cats and dogs, and other urban wildlife such as foxes and raccoons.
She also noted that an owl would not eat the poison directly, since it’s usually in a bait trap for rodents.
Shadick said she does not suspect anything nefarious.
The poison was probably put out by “just a local person who was trying to get rid of the mice in their garage. That is very easily purchased pretty much anywhere,” she said.
The dead owl was brought to her after someone found it in a yard on Lake Crescent.
Shadick said such cases come up about once a year.
In response to a story and picture of the dead owl on Living Sky’s Facebook page, one person commented “So sad! Had 2 (great horned owls) dead in my yard last year, for the very same reason.”
Shadick is working on a request to the Canadian Co-operative Wildlife Health Centre to perform a necropsy (post-mortem examination), to confirm her suspicion of poisoning, but several weeks could pass before she has results.
“We would like to be able to track how many animals die based on eating other animals that were poisoned,” she said.
In the meantime, Shadick is asking people to use snap traps instead of poison. The devices are considered “semi-humane,” she said, “Because if the mouse does go for the food, and if the snap trap worked as it is supposed to, it snaps their neck instantaneously. So there’s no prolonged pain, there’s no bleeding out internally, there’s no experience of agony for that animal.”
People can bring in the poison-free dead mice they’ve trapped to feed the captive raptors who are spending the winter at Living Sky.