A summary: I HAVE to get off THE ISLAND! Drowning in marsh. Kayak rescue. Big orange thing that swims. The blue blanket, the box and the red gloves. Boat ride. Back in a tree. Jump out of tree for dinner since still can’t fly and my Big Sib is getting all the rats. Screeching all evening. Parents trying to get me to climb up. Dale trying to get me to climb up. I prefer the ground. I am so tired of screeching. I identify as a marsh owl not a wood owl. No one gets me. I am so hungry. No one will feed me. Dale can’t sleep. Gutted. It is very cold and raining. My parents are fed up. Dale keeps checking on me. My parents keep feeding my big sibling!  But nobody is feeding me! I have to learn to climb……Dale is offering a nice warm box in the outside shower but no rats…Nobody understands me….I…am…really…really…hungry…

After an uneventful Sunday on The ISLAND,  and an early Monday morning check on MiniMe, I (Dale) am feeling more confident that MiniMe is truly doing OK on The ISLAND…BUT.

But I am not totally convinced. I just have this weird feeling. So I decide on a mid afternoon break and take a walk through the garden, along the marsh, check out the island, looking, listening. Something is not right.

I walk out my neighbor’s dock a bit further. OMG! This cannot be happening.

 

 

I am stunned. MiniMe for some mysterious reason has decided to abandon The ISLAND. It is caught between the creek and high tide flooded spartina grass. It is too deep, the marsh grass too flimsy and its wings are too wet and too heavy. Talk about up the creek without a paddle….

But wait…I have a paddle! I call my husband, Scott. I don’t even know if he is home. He answers. He tries to reason with me. Intervention v Interference. Please, please come here quick. He does. He takes one look at MiniMe’s predicament and one look at my face and St. Scott goes home for the kayak. I run for the box, the blanket, the red gloves and a towel. Seems like a towel might be necessary.

I have no idea how this is going to work. My kayak is the float on top variety. Scott is taking  photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is hard to see but if you look closely, St. Scott and I have placed MiniMe just below its big sibling. Lately we have been calling it Big Foot. (?)

 

But, well, I don’t stay in the tree….

PS This is why Dale never gets a chance to catch up on her blog, or cook dinner, or do laundry (and she has a ton of muddy clothes), or go get her hair cut and colored, or do her real, paying job, or vacuum. I think there’s lots of marsh grass and stuff on her floors….Her human mother even asked if Dale was deliberately letting her hair go gray!?!

It’s all my fault….

To be continued…