I would like to point out for the record that I was not the first hooligan to roam the streets of Livermore. Not only had my two brother’s beat me to that distinction, but so had several of the residents in Boot Hill out west of town.
No, really, we had a hill on the west edge of town called Boot Hill, and yes, it really was a cemetery from the days of the Mexican war and gunfights, cowboys and gunfights, and prohibition and gunfights, and well, heck, if’n you had known some of the characters around town when we were growing up, just gunfights and gunfights.
Yep, ol’ Livermore had been slowly passing time for more years than most folks had lived staying mostly the same. Then my brothers moved to town. And there are those who would tell you the old town was never the same again.
But I digress.
The town came to be well before electricity arrived in that back country part of California. In fact, one of the early events in the electrical field was back in 1901 when Dennis Bernal (the founder and owner of Livermore Power and Light Company) donated an electric light to light up the inside of the fire station. That light was screwed in and the switch was thrown. The bulb was originally rated as a 60 watt bulb and threw a glorious glow over the horse-drawn hand pumpers as they sat housed in the double bay of the brick fire house.
That was now some 115 years ago, and that light is still burning. Admittedly its puny 4 watt consumption does little to provide safety for the firemen these days, but as the (by far) recognized oldest operating light bulb in history, that feeble glow seems to abnormally warm the hearts of the local politicians.
Let’s see, what got me started on that…Oh, yea. Electricity.
Since the town had been around long before electricity the residents had only three choices when it came to water supplies. Bucket trips to the arroyos, dig a hand pump well in the yard, or for the really rich, build a windmill that would pump water up to a second story water tank.
The advantage of the elevated tank was that you could then plumb water directly into the house and do away with the whole bucket toting idea altogether.
Ultimately Dennis Bernal did come to town and he did found the Livermore Power and Light Company and with that the city got into the water business. The city acquired selected hill-tops (though not Boot Hill as it already served a purpose) and built water tanks on the top of those hills, sometimes on 60 foot high towers, sometimes, just on the ground.
With the electric motors they pulled water up out of wells, charged those tanks and let gravity carry water to all the households the city sold water to. Yep, pretty soon everyone was dumping the bucket in favor of running indoor water. And the rich were dumping their own water tanks in favor of ones owned and maintained by someone else.
Why is that important? Well, because that meant that all over town there were these steep sided outbuildings that had 2000 gallon or so wooden tanks on top. And those wooden tanks fell into disuse.
And after a few years of disuse, those tanks started to break open one slat or maybe two at a time. Or several shingles would blow off the top during a storm. And by the time Barry, Jeff, and I were old enough to get interested, most all of those old tanks had been taken over by barn owls as nesting sites.
Dad had built chicken and pigeon coops all across the back of the garage and we were in the bird business pretty good. Eggs, fryers, squab, whatever, if it flew and we could raise it, it was headed for a dinner plate someday.
We boys had been reading along about that time about Knights and Kings and hunting with falcons. And while we never saw a falcon nest anywhere other than in the top of a couple hundred foot tree, we figured out early mornings throwing papers where Barn Owls nested.
One thing and another and next thing you know we were all experimenting with sneaking up the steep side of someone’s old well house to get to the top of the tank and worm our way in to liberate baby owls from their nests. Must have been some form of commiseration going on, we all new how parents had such unreasonable expectations, but liberating those baby owls, we were doing them a favor.
Setting them on a life of freedom so to speak.
It might surprise you to know that the best time for hunting baby owls is when it is full on dark.
True, you are a lot more likely to grab a handful of climbing rose plant and have to pull thorns out of your palm, and one misstep was a bit of a drop down to (hopefully) a fairly wet lawn. But full dark was best for two reasons, first is that the mother owl is usually off hunting in the early dark hours and second is, you don’t want any part of trying to liberate a baby owl while the mother is anywhere within earshot.
If the beak or claws miss you, the dang wings will beat your head silly.
Yep, you could get pretty tore up trying to snag one of those fluff balls. And I don’t care what you say, a nestling barn owl is so remarkably ugly as to be pretty cute.
They have this mostly light gray fluff all over in place of feathers. Light gray with darker spots from head to feet like some character clown in an old pre-talky movie. And they are shaped just like a pear. Or a Webble for those of you that remember those toys. And just like the Webbles, those nestlings could charge back and forth across the floor of an old water tank in the full on dark wobbling this way and that. Unlike the Webbles, those little owls fell down pretty regular.
Good thing too, otherwise I don’t think we would ever have caught any.
Now along with an old high rise water tank, a Mother owl out hunting food and a flashlight, you had better remember to haul along a heavy set of leather gloves if you are going to catch up owlets. Them buggers were known to bit once in a while. Meaning anytime a bit of your flrsh happened to com in range of their sharp little beaks. And unlike sharp little kitten teeth baby barn owl beaks could do serious damage.
For a couple three years there, one or the other of us would be successful catching a young owl that was just near the end of the fur-ball stage and beginning to grow feathers. Once caught we would haul it home to be temporarily housed in one of the bird pens out back until its flight feathers came in. We boys willingly pooled funds from our paper routes to buy food to keep them alive and growing. And on several occasions for a few weeks a new chore popped up on the list. Feed the owl.
Now owl feeding isn’t anything like feeding chickens, or parakeets, or even pheasant. On all of those, you just tossed some seed into the enclosure and checked the water supply.
Nope owl feeding was a bit more involved.
We used to run down to the grocers and buy up old tubs of liver that were turning color and about to be thrown out. Heck, once the grocer knew what we were up to, they would hold them for us. Then at feeding time, we pulled the liver out of the refrigerator and cut it into pieces, sized based on how old the owl was.
It’s amazing how big a piece of liver an owl can choke down. Yea, the poor critter has to gag a few times, and thrust its head forward and back, and close its eyes in concentration, but it can choke down a piece that you would swear was as big as it’s head.
Oh, I hear all you untainted out there with your: “for heaven’s sake, why not just cut the food up a bit smaller”.
The seventeen scars on the last joint of my two thumbs and fore fingers’ why.
Ornithologists may be right about how well an owl can see flying at night. But if so, I can tell you from personal experience that it has to be because they saved up using their eyes until they started flying.
The only thing more painful that having an owl misjudge where the liver ends and the finger begins…is trying to get it to turn loose once it has made the error.
© Copyright 2016 Marty Vandermolen
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