newsobserver.com

"RALEIGH - With his wings proudly spread, an orphaned screech owl took his first flaps as a wild adult Saturday, nursed to full strength, free to soar into the tall oaks around Lake Wheeler and hunt mice into old age.

He fluttered across a field of grass, wobbly as an old-time biplane, then landed on a strip of yellow caution tape. He perched there for second, clinging by his beak, then dropped to the ground.

“He can fly,” groaned Kindra Mammone, the bird’s caregiver since May. “He’s just being a pill.”

Five new owls now inhabit the lake thanks to Claws Inc., the nonprofit Mammone runs out of her home near Chapel Hill, aimed at healing wounded wildlife, rescuing exotic pets and building harmony between human and critter." ...read more