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LOWER STRATTON, England, - Authorities in southwest England are warning residents to be on the lookout for a giant owl that may be hungry enough to make a meal of their pet cat or dog. The European eagle owl escaped Sunday from its enclosure in the back garden of a home in Lower Stratton, near Swindon, The Times of London Online reports. "The owner went into the enclosure and the owl flew at him," says a spokeswoman for Wiltshire police. The spokeswoman said the owl, which has a six-foot wingspan, is unlikely to attack humans because it was bred in...

ROCK HILL Part of the walking trail at Rock Hill's Cherry Park was closed Friday after an owl attacked two people in the park earlier this week, according to city officials. "There is an owl and it has been acting aggressively," said John Taylor, a supervisor with the city's Parks, Recreation and Tourism department. Earl White, 71, said he was attacked Tuesday morning on his daily walk about 6:45 a.m. "I saw something flying opposite me, and then I was attacked," White said. "It got me by the head." White reported the attack to park officials. "It scared the daylights...

GRANTS PASS, Ore.—The Obama administration has notified a federal court that it will not defend the Bush administration's decision to cut protections for the northern spotted owl, a threatened bird whose need for old growth forests has been at the center of long-standing battles over logging in the Northwest. In a motion filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., lawyers for the Department of Interior said they based the decision on an inspector general's report finding potential political interference in owl protections by a former deputy assistant Interior secretary, Julie MacDonald. The motion is the latest in a...

Just the twoo of us: Meet Orbit the orphaned owl and his toy companion CLAIRE ELLICOTT 25th February 2009. In his five short weeks of life, Orbit hasn't met many other owls. So he isn't at all worried that his new best friend doesn't hoot back. The orphaned chick is perfectly content in the company of the stuffed bird perched next to him and is never far from his side. Enlarge Orphaned chick Orbit and his toy playmate Orbit, a common barn owl, was given the toy by Lyndsey Wood, his carer at Folly Farm, near Narberth in West Wales....

A couple in Greater Manchester had a wedding with a difference when the rings were flown in by a special guest. Fudge the barn owl flew onto the arm of groom Craig Wilson as he and Sian Davies made their vows at The White Hart in Lydgate near Oldham.

<p>When Chicago birders flocked to Montrose Beach this week for a glimpse of two strange birds not often seen in these parts, they got something far more: a bloody death scene and a queasy feeling they might be partly to blame.</p>

A Reason to Always Do Your FOD Check From the US Navy aboard the USS Harry S Truman: When the words foreign object debris (FOD) come to mind the last thing someone thinks about is an owl. On the morning of March 17 on board USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), an owl is exactly what was found. What might have been a mishap, ended on a happier note thanks to a few Sailors' attention to detail. "I was the safety behind the 300 jet. That's why I probably ended up there first," said Aviation Structural Mechanic (Equipment) 3rd class...

PORTLAND, Ore. - A few hundred aggressive cousins of the threatened northern spotted owl may be killed by government agents with shotguns under a proposed federal plan. The spotted owl was listed as threatened 17 years ago, and its numbers continue to dwindle through much of its range in the Pacific Northwest, federal officials said Thursday in proposing the plan to prevent the species from dying out. The barred owls have crowded their cousins, the spotted owls, out of prime habitat, sometimes even attacking them. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hopes that thinning the number of barred owls will...

Electrocuted owl cuts power to 23,000 Tue Feb 6, 4:59 PM ET CASPER, Wyo. - An owl electrocuted itself in an electrical substation, briefly knocking out power to almost 23,000 customers in south Casper. Margaret Oler, spokeswoman for Rocky Mountain Power, said the bird tripped the high-voltage line at 10:20 p.m. Sunday, shutting down that and three other substations. She called it the largest outage she's seen in 25 years. "Our equipment operated exactly as it should have and did not allow the damage to go further," Oler said. It took about an hour to restore power.

A mutant tree all aglow BY DAVE BARRY This classic Dave Barry column was originally published Dec. 14, 1997. Tis that special time of year, The Holiday Retail Purchasing Season, a time when we traditionally print heartwarming human-interest stories designed to make you feel better about running up a level of debt normally associated with Mexico. I have such a heartwarming story, which was published by The London Times and sent in by alert reader John Nicholls. The story, which I am not making up, concerns a man named Neil from Devon, England, who discovered an owl nesting in his...

U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy — who ripped Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito for ties to a group that discriminates against women — says he’s going to quit a club notorious for discriminating against women “as fast as I can.” Kennedy was outed by conservatives late last week as a current member of The Owl Club, a social club for Harvard alumni that bans women from membership. In an interview with WHDH Channel 7’s Andy Hiller that aired last night, Kennedy said, “I joined when I . . . 52 years ago, I was a member of the Owl Club,...

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy belongs to a social club for Harvard students and alumni that was evicted from campus nearly 20 years ago after refusing to allow female members. According to the online membership directory of the Owl Club, the Massachusetts Democrat updated his personal information -- including the address of his home that is in his wife's name -- on Sept. 7. The club has long been reviled on campus as "sexist" and "elitist" and, in 1984, was booted from the university for violating federal anti-discrimination laws, authored by Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy has spent much of this week's...

Forget Sam Alito's tenuous ties, two decades ago, to the Concerned Alumni of Princeton. Where's the outrage about Sen. Edward Kennedy's continuing membership in the Owl Club? Kennedy relentlessly badgered Judge Alito for listing the Princeton group on a job application in 1985, but The Washington Times reported Thursday that the Massachusetts senator remains active with the Owl - one of nine males-only fraternities that in 1984 Harvard "booted from the university for violating federal anti-discrimination laws, authored by Mr. Kennedy." TheNew York Times examined the records of CAP and found no evidence Alito was an active member. Yet the...

SARASOTA— The Pelican Man's Bird Sanctuary in Sarasota is getting ready to release one buzzed bird back out into the wild. Vets at the sanctuary have been caring for a screech owl that was found acting a little odd. A couple purchased a Christmas tree and had it in the house for five days before decorating it. That's when the couple discovered a tiny screech owl in the tree. The couple called the sanctuary's rescue squad. But the story wasn't very interesting until Melissa Dolinsky began assessing the owl's health. "I kept smelling him and smelling him going, 'What is...

A new generation of ground-based telescopes could be up to 10 times the size of existing instruments and have vision 40 times as sharp as the Hubble space telescope.Astronomers have been hailing the plans, as a European project to build an Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) enters a design testing phase. An ELT is vital if the pace of astronomical breakthroughs is to continue, say experts. The plans were outlined at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Birmingham. Concepts for ELTs include the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) being considered by the US and Canada; and the Euro50 and Overwhelmingly Large Telescope...

Could affect option to import, replenish stock of Ariz. birds. The pygmy owl population dropped sharply during the past five years in northern Sonora, a new study has concluded. The findings could spell trouble for U.S. government plans to possibly import northern Mexican birds to enhance Arizona's small cactus ferruginous pygmy owl population, said two University of Arizona researchers who wrote the study. The study doesn't play directly into legal issues that have the Arizona owl's endangered status in limbo, they said. But its results make it important to protect the Arizona and Sonoran populations, said the researchers at UA's...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- The northern spotted owl, the bird at the center of the Pacific Northwest logging wars, will stay on the threatened species list, the government said Thursday. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service review said the spotted owl is still declining in numbers because of wildfires, logging on private land, the West Nile virus and the loss of territory to a more aggressive species, the barred owl. The spotted owl has been listed as threatened since 1990. To help save it, the government in 1994 cut logging by more than 80 percent in the Northwest's national forests....

The fact that John Kerry has no solid foundation on any issue energizes the left. The conservatives may be still scratching their heads on how Kerry came to be the Democrat's candidate and may blame it on many factors. The fact is, Kerry's willingness to change positions depending on where the wind blows excites the extreme liberals. He has no moral compass. He has no loyalty to traditional American standards. He is not bound by ethics. All very good reasons to make him the front man of such a floundering party.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrat John Kerry, whose nominating convention highlighted his war service and focused on national security, has narrowed the gap on President Bush's strong suit of protecting the country, according to an Associated Press poll that shows the race remains tight. Flanked by his Vietnam crewmates, Kerry delivered an acceptance speech last week laden with references to patriotism, his decorated military record and his qualifications for commander in chief -- a theme underscored by speaker after speaker over the four-day gathering. Advertisement The images and rhetoric registered with a number of voters. In the AP survey conducted Tuesday...

The northern spotted owl. (2001 photo by Doug Beghtel) Endangered Owl Now Threatened by Rival Species BY MICHAEL MILSTEIN   PORTLAND, Ore. -- The northern spotted owl, whose protection under the Endangered Species Act since 1990 helped push logging of federal lands to near collapse, is faring worse now than it was five years ago, a new assessment has found. Spotted owl numbers have fallen by roughly half over the past decade in parts of Washington and Oregon's Warm Springs Reservation, and they have dwindled by nearly a quarter in sections of Oregon's Coast and Cascade ranges. In only...