Mr. Sassy Pants comes home

Some of the folks at the Northland Animal Hospital fondly remember her as Mr. Sassy Pants.

"That was before we knew she was a female," said Dr. Scott Craig a veterinarian at the hospital.

Craig was part of a small group today who watched Mr. (er, Ms.) Sassy Pants fly away in the Hiawatha Highlands Conservation Area.

In March, 2005, the great horned owl was found with a severely broken wing on a local road.

Craig led the team that operated on Sassy Pants and delivered her to the Vineland Owl Foundation centre in Southern Ontario.

"What better place for her than there where they have enclosures that are 20 feet high, 30 feet wide by 70 to 100 feet long," he said. "[S]he was first put into flight school then into hunting school and now here [s]he is."

Craig said that the surgical procedure was one of the first of its kind in Canada.

"We packed the wound with chicken fat between the bones so they wouldn't fuse," he said. "An animal like this is very athletic and needs to have perfect use of its wings or you would basically be releasing it to slowly starve to death."

Craig said some of his colleagues doubted that the operation would work but today Mr. (er Ms.) Sassy Pants proved them wrong as she spread her wings and flew across the conservation area.

As for her gender, Craig says that female owls are generally bigger and more aggressive than males and this one certainly fits the bill at 3.4 pounds.

With about 10 pounds of attitude.

So they are reasonably sure she is a girl.