There was a knock at the door to our office, which happens to be a rented house on a quiet back street between Olongapo and Baretto so visitors are usually treated with suspicion.
I opened the door and there was a woman stood there holding what looked like a barn owl (it was white) by the wing tips pinched together in her hand. She started talking to me in the local lingo and so I called our accountant to come and translate.
Apparently, the owl had been found with its legs broken. How this happened is anyone's guess. I've no idea why they decided to bring it to our office when there were plenty of other houses in and around the area, but she seemed to have no idea what to do with the sick bird.
I knew there was a wildlife rescue place in Subic Bay but I wasn't sure what its role was exactly and whether they took in wounded owls, but they seemed like the best choice under the circumstances.
So I told the finder of the owl to place it in a cardboard box and I'd take it over myself to see if it could be put on the road to recovery. When she duly returned she had packed the owl in a box so small that she would have had to break its legs to get it in there if they weren't already broken.
Actually, this was a better result than the owl I discovered living in an abandoned water tower we were about to renovate in Ghana back in '95. The owl, again pure white in colour, was flying around between the old timber scaffolding when we went inside (it was a big, elevated tank). If you've never been around an owl when it's flying the amazing thing that strikes you is it is completely silent in flight, no flapping sound of the wings at all. I gave strict instructions to the workers to seal off the tank at night when I assumed the owl would be out hunting, thereby excluding it from the tank forcing it to find somewhere else to roost allowing us to on with the task of fixing up the tank.
The next morning when I went back to site and asked the foreman, Michael, if everything went smoothly last night. 'Yes boss, no problem' he told me. As I walked across the site I noticed white feathers scattered about the place so I asked Michael what happened to the owl. 'Plenty good chop', he said (chop meaning food). I was aghast and asked him what happened. I learnt that a crew of the workers had gone into the tank and sealed the opening so the owl couldn't escape and then proceeded to chase it and batter it to death with lumps of wood and then promptly cooked it over a fire and ate it. Utterly barbaric.
Back to the Philippines, I guess it was the owl's lucky day because I'd been told at a conservation centre in Panay that Hornbills were endangered because the locals had a propensity to eating them and I don't see they would have been largely fussed if it was an owl instead.
I jumped in the car and went to the
Wildlife in Need (WIN) Centre in Subic Bay. I'd passed the place several time before and never really gave it much thought as to what they did. I walked into the place with the boxed owl and handed it over explaining where I picked it up from. At the entrance to the place there was a cage of rescued cats and kittens, which the WIN centre neuter so I'm hoping that's where all my cats at my previous house had disappeared to.
Inside the centre and in the pens in the compound there were lizards and snakes confiscated from errant owners; rescued macaque monkeys that were part of a re-release in to the wild scheme (I see so many of these monkeys in the wild with missing limbs which I assume they lose in snares or traps); stray dogs; fruit bats, kites, Serpent and Fish Eagles, and a variety of other small forest mammals (civet cats primarily, which also seem to end up as neglected pets).
If you happen to find yourself in Subic Bay go and pay them a visit as they do some wonderful work and if you agree make a donation that will be gratefully received.
