Owl Patrol

Early yesterday morning as I was getting into my car to leave for school I heard an unfamiliar bird call. I am used to hearing the birds sing every morning but this one call I had only heard on tv or on the internet. I heard an owl. Now I absolutely love owls to death, but I also know that owls that live near your house can be very bad for small pets. I looked around at all the trees and saw nothing so I got in my car and left. When I returned home it was almost 4:30 so the sun was already setting and it was getting dark fast. I got out of my car and decided I would stand in the driveway just to listen for any more hoots. All of a sudden I heard one right after the other and I glanced up to the tree behind our fence and there were two very large owls sitting on different branches. This was very cool but very bad. I have heard about several people losing their Yorkies because owls came and snatched them up. With Bella being smaller than a rabbit, I figured we needed to go on owl patrol. As soon as Bella and Sophie were out the back door wandering around I began to keep a close eye on the owls. They were just glaring down at my girls. I hurried them into the house and for the rest of the night went with them outside to protect them. I tried to capture a picture of the owls but it was already too dark for my camera to get a good shot. You can see two blobs in the picture. One is pretty apparent but the other one is near the bottom of the picture and is a little smaller. If you click on the picture I think you can zoom in on them more. I will try to get another picture earlier this evening that will hopefully be higher quality. I am afraid the birds are going through a mating ritual and might be around for a while so we are going to call animal control to see if they can help with the situation. We want our dogs to be safe in the backyard and have the freedom to go out unattended to play. My dogs will always come first, but it also sure is neat to see one of the coolest kinds of birds in the backyard.