PROVIDENCE BAY—It took a lot of effort—and even some of his blood—for a Providence Bay man to get rid of a great horned owl that had killed five of the chickens he had been raising.
“This great horned owl killed five of my chickens inside our chicken coop,” explained Glenn Black, on the morning of January 24. “This owl had been roosting in there.”
Mr. Black explained, “I had gone into the chicken coop the owl was roosting in-—I have leather work gloves that I put on—and grabbed him. He put one of his talons right through the gloves, right into the back of one of my hands. I was bleeding like a stuck pig!”
“I then took him outside, released him and he flew away,” said Mr. Black, a little later after the incident had occurred.
“The owl killed five of my chickens, I found them dead yesterday (January 23) and thought at first maybe it was the cold that had got to them.”
Mr. Black noted, “I’ve had barn owls hang around the property in the past two to five years and they clean out the mice and moles, but after about two months they move on. This was my first up close encounter with a great horned owl.”
“It’s part of the hazards of chicken farming,” said Mr. Black. “Hopefully in the future, he chooses mice and rabbits in the forest, rather than my chickens.”
