From Center for Wildlife
Gaia and Galileo have laid their first eggs of 2026!
This sweet, permanently injured ambassador couple have been a bonded pair at CFW since Gaia's arrival in 2011. We are honored to report that Gaia and several of our other female ambassadors lay eggs each year, which is a sign of their health, low stress levels, appropriate nutrition and access to sunlight. The eggs are not fertile, and due to Gaia and Galileo's injuries, it is virtually impossible for them to achieve fertility. Although we have never seen any fertilized eggs from our ambassadors, we always candle our ambassador's eggs first to be sure - checking the eggs in the dark by holding a light up to them to look for a yolk sac indicating fertilization. Once the eggs are confirmed infertile, we hollow them out and use them as educational tools!
Although the eggs that Gaia and Galileo produced weren't viable - try telling them that! They maintain all their wild instincts to fiercely protect their babies, but we can't let infertile eggs sit in their enclosures where they will eventually go bad. So, our ambassador caretakers must embark on an intimidating expedition..
They must "Indiana Jones-style" switch the eggs out for lacrosse balls! That way, Gaia can feel like a good mother warming her eggs, while we don't have to leave any real eggs in there to become rotten. While a caretaker takes Gaia for a walk and weight check, another staff member swaps out the eggs. Allowing them to go through the motions of nesting, laying and incubating eggs allows them to go through their natural cycles and processes, something we always try to foster with their outdoor enclosures and habitat setups. Once her maternal hormones have subsided, we can safely remove her "eggs" (lacrosse ball babies), and she can return happily to her child-free life until next year's breeding season!
Good job Gaia and Galileo!
Is Galileo missing an eye?
Ah, nice, they have a profile page!
I did a good write up about the procedure, but it was modestly icky. The eye is not technically removed, as it would cause a lot of problems since the eye is both physically so large and can also damage sight in the other eye or make them deaf, as the eyes protrude into the ear canal.
They basically remove the front portion that is not inside the skull and then they close the wound. That way the eye still serves all its internal structural purposes, while the damaged portion is removed.
Kinda creepy, but also kinda cool. I can link the writeup with some diagrams if you'd like, or this is about as PG as I can make it.
Poor Galileo - thanks, I'd love the link
Found it! It's not as gruesome as I recall. I remember writing it on the plane coming back from my honeymoon, so I guess I kept it light and not too gory! 😆
This is the article I referenced for the post. I don't think I left anything out, I just tried to present it in everyday language. There's a before/after pic of the Screech the article's procedure was done on, but there's no blood or anything like that. The eye is just cloudy in the before, and it looks great afterward!
Thanks!
I'm afraid i can't read the article, since I'm not subscribed. Nevermind, i enjoy reading your posts more anyway.
And yeah, eating and pooping are always good signs, regardless of species.
Edit: very interesting, the way owls eyes are only "shut down", so overall bone structure is preserved.
Hmmm, maybe the pop-up blocker on that computer got around the paywall.
Yes, it's crazy how much space the eyes take up internally. I remember the article said there's such limited space between the nerves going to each eye that trying to remove one eye often destroys the nerves to the other eye. Also the ear canal is designed around that eye being there, so it screws with their acoustics. And finally if those sclera around the eye collapse, the face really sinks in and throws off their balance. So much trouble is avoided by only removing the damaged globe. It's really crazy to see how important the eyes are for more than just vision.
Looking at a great horned's skull, you can see how much the eye matters
I found another pic of this lovely couple. Galileo's muted eye is more visible.
Btw: I read in another comment about your first owl presentation in may. Please let us know!
I'm sure it will be great, but right now it is kind of a nightmare for me.
They asked me to do it when we were at the rehab conference in Nov. I was so excited to do a presentation and get to hold Harry, the lady Screech all day and show her off to the world. Then I found out she passed.
Steve was Harry's aviary-mate, and he was more shy and less good in public, but could be ok if he was more in the background. I found out this week he also just passed a little after Harry did.
That just leaves Elliot, but he is a GHO and only likes about 2 people in the whole universe, so he cannot be around a huge crowd of randos.
This leaves me with no owl for my big breakthrough owl presentation. 😔
I wanted to make all 8 owls of our state out of foam core board at actual life size, and hopefully some weighted life sizes plushies of the GHO and Screech, our 2 most common owls. If all goes well, that's what I'll have to work with, along with some anatomical specimens of bones, feathers, etc from our classroom.
They've also assigned me to an info booth for animal houses they're either selling or giving as prizes. One is an owl house, but there are also songbirds, bats, and I also heard frog houses for me to make presentations about. I know nothing about these things! 😄
This all wouldn't be so bad, but insurance and the med supply company have still not gotten me my CPAP so I can actually sleep. I've felt like the walking dead for months and cannot concentrate on any task or find any spare energy to do much other than sleep and go on autopilot for my real job. So I'm finding it insanely hard to get started on any of this stuff.
I also got my rabies vaccine results back yesterday, and while I shows antibodies, I don't have enough to work with the new animals (fox, skunk, raccoon, bat, gopher). I spent hundreds of dollars and drove about 20 hours total to get these shots, and I didn't get the results I needed. Now I will need to wait until another shot clinic comes up to get a booster, so probably another $100, 6 hours driving, and another $100 blood test and I have no idea when that will happen.
Son I'm just really having a tough time in general right now. We have a group text going for the event, but my brain can't handle that much info about rotating topics, but the head of the event organization is on my clinic shift starting the 15th of this month, so I'll have to talk to her then and hopefully I can get more info I need and see if we can delegate some of these tasks.
Ughhhh! 😮💨
Omg that sounds like quite a lot and I'm so sorry for Steve and Harry.
Maybe it's even better to work with plushie and foam core owls, leaving possibly stressed out owls out of the equation. But i also have no idea what i'm talking about, do some owls actually enjoy the attention?
I'm also threading a hard path in the last months and costs are the main villain in all this.
No doubt it will turn out great - Godspeed!
I appreciate your sympathy. Harry and Steve had nice long lives, and I have pics from about 8 years ago when I first met them, so I'm sure they've inspired many people to learn about and help out owls. I'm happy for the time we've had with them and that they got to live well until their health declined naturally and they got a peaceful end. ❤️
I'm mainly bummed out for my own selfish reason. I wanted to hang out with the owl on my arm all day, dang it! It would have been nice to show off their gyroscopic head and their beautiful eyes, but I'm sure the owls enjoy it as much as we enjoy going to our jobs. We put up with it when we have to so we can earn our keep. The models and specimens are better for getting up close and hands on, since the public can't handle the birds, but nothing can replace the presence that even a small owl has.
Our violent GHO is somewhat imprinted, which is why he failed his release, but even it thinking it's at least a portion human, that sense of humanity it has is not very widespread. It's limited to a small handful of people that are his primary caretakers. Harry and Steve were more wild, coming to our clinic as adults that were in accidents, so their minds were all owl, but they were just both varying degrees calmer in demeanor. Even with their much simpler brains, all the birds I meet display such unique degrees of emotion, security, and personality. That's even with us doing our best to keep them wild and not "make friends" with them, as that goes against our licensed mission.
Good luck with your challenges as well! The owl photos and stories and myself are always here when you need some positive support!