Note to the Feds: Don't Mess With My Owls!

SEATTLE, WA — Students and staff at the University of Washington were surprised early Friday morning to find a tiny, gray barred owl sitting dazed and confused on the sidewalk near the Suzzallo and Allen Libraries. As academics will their first instinct was to summon someone in authority. Someone quickly phoned the UW Environmental Health and Safety department and next thing you know a helpful staffer had strung up enough yellow "caution" tape around the owl to clear a murder scene. Then, they erected some traffic cones for good measure. In addition to all that caution tape, EHS also put up a sign insisting passerbys not bother the owl.

By 11 a.m., a wildlife biologist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture was on scene to scoop the little owl up and tucked it in a red box . The owl was delivered to the PAWS shelter in Lynnwood, where the vet found the little fellow bruised but in fair shape. It was decide that he had likely flown into a window and stunned himself. It was demonstrative of the university's befuddlement over the whole thing (and just this side of miraculous) that the university agreed to use "he" as the owl's pronoun of choice.

The interesting bit of the report was that though this little owl lives here, it is not native to the Northeast. Barred owls appear to have migrated here only recently, probably having heard that spotted owls were dying out. The feds are in such a dither about the threat to spotted owls, having spent so many millions in programs to protect spotted owls, that in 2013, the federal government came up with a plan to hire hunters to kill barred owls in the Pacific Northwest to protect northern spotted owls. Apparently barred owls are hogging all the good hunting grounds.

We have a pair of barred owls that have made our 15 acre wood their personal hunting ground. It's a good spot. My neighbor, Dan, feeds the squirrels, swelling the population hereabouts. My landlady live traps the squirrels when they come over and attempt to settle in her attic - banishing them to the woods around the nearby Army base. Between the two of them they've achieved a kind of ecological balance - until the barred owls moved in. They probably ran off a couple of spotted owls if the Audubon Society is to be believed.

Since they moved in, the owls have reduced my landlady's squirrel relocation tally significantly and thinned the crowd around Dan's feeder. Dan's squirrel feed lot is located just below our bedroom window and the owls often sit on a nearby tree branch trying to decide which of the 10 to 15 squirrels circling the squirrel feeder at all times look the fattest. They sing owlish love songs outside of our bedroom window in the spring. During holiday weekends when Washingtonians engage in their traditional home fireworks extravaganza, Lucy the dog hides upstairs and the owls come sit very close to the house to ride out the whole neighborhood barrage. We love our owls.

The spotted owls seem insistent on becoming extinct despite the government having spent several fortunes defending them. Species come and species go seems to be the rule. It's the way of nature. I may not buy the whole Darwinian evolution deal, but there's some truth to the survival of the fittest model. Perhaps spotted owls are just a puny species whose time has come.  Besides! Like I said, I like our barred owls. I can even get them to hoot back at me by imitating their typical "who cooks for you" call. I've grown quite fond of the pair of them, even when they insist on singing love songs outside my window at 1 AM. Still the owls have become part of the ecosystem family around here. They are hard workers and without out them who would pick off the giant ship rats that get off the ships in Puget Sound and move inland. 

I'm rather a pacifist by nature, but if the feds send hired guns after my owls, I just may have to exercise my 2nd amendment rights to defend my homies.

I thought the leftists in the federal government liked illegal immigrants! Apparently, however, they don't mind exhibiting their blatant prejudice against the barred owl race. These undocumented immigrants to the Pacific Northwest are being oppressed by the Federales.  The Forest Service (ICE to the animal kingdom) are talking about hiring gunmen to stalk and kill these innocent refugees from the violence and oppression of the Northeast states, seeking freedom and sanctuary in Oregon, Idaho and Washington State.

Therefore, taking my cue from members of the Democrat party, I have declared our little patch of wooded wetlands a sanctuary city for undocumented barred owls.

Just be warned! I'm from Texas and I'll be armed.

*Since I wrote this article, the Biden Department of the Interior has conducted a pilot program in which they paid Elmer Fudd types $3,000 each for the murder of 1500 daddy, mommy, and baby barred owls. And this did nothing to save spotted owls. Their populations have been declining long before the barred owls moved in as old growth forests have been cleared to make room for cities to accommodate the millions of undocumented liberals migrating to the left coast. The barred owls' great sin is that they are better hunters than spotted owls and often interbreed with spotted owls (can you say "miscegenation"). Below is a video of Senator John Kennedy 'splaining why all this is a stupid idea. 

© 2019/2025 by Tom King
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eF9eCX2cUg

So Who Owns the Rain?

Gary Harrington, of Jackson County, Oregon was jailed and fined a couple of years ago for collecting rainwater. In court, Oregon officials declared unequivocally that rainwater is considered the "property of the state." Libertarians, conservatives and more than a few permaculturists (sustainable gardening/farming enthusiasts) are outraged. As it turns out they are more outraged by the government claiming to own the rain that falls on your property than they are by Mr. Harrington's treatment, but, after all, it's the principle of the thing.

Admittedly Mr. Harrington was collecting rather a lot of rainwater and it wasn't in barrels behind his house. Harrington had constructed 3 ponds on his 170 acre land which among them hold 13 million gallons of water. None of these ponds are situated on streams. The water comes from rain which actually falls on Harrington's property and from snow melt - also from snow on his land.

The big deal that sent everyone through the roof was the statement in court by Oregon officials that the State of Oregon owns all the rain that falls on your property and that if you want to use any significant amount of it, you have to get a permit from the state.  Given that streams and rivers and town water supplies depend on runoff from the land, one can kind of understand why the state or county might want to not lose 170 acres of it. But of course, in trying to make everything fair, the government almost creates more problems than it solves.

The way the law reads, you can only collect rain off of hard surfaces like concrete driveways, rooftops and such, but once it hits the ground, it's no longer yours to do with as you please. According to director of the Oregon Water Resources Department, Tom Paul, "Oregon law says all of the water in the state of Oregon is public water and if you want to use that water, either to divert it or to store it, you have to acquire a water right from the state of Oregon before doing that activity."

Always fearful of government overreach, people on both the right AND left wonder, "What's next?" Sunshine falls on your property. Are they going to charge you a fee for the sun that you use if you put up solar panels? How about the wind? Does Oregon own the wind? Will they charge you a fee for wind usage if you put up a wind charger? 

Here's one issue where we can hook up with the sustainable permaculture people, not a notably conservative lot and give them a little love and maybe get their votes next election. After all, it's liberals that are pushing this kind of thing, not conservatives. We think your home's your castle and rain, sun and wind belong to you. We don't like government overreach either.

If it had been a matter of Harrington arbitrarily blocking up a stream and depriving those downstream from free access to water, I can see the state's getting involved. In the Harrington case, Gary is a cranky old guy who blew off orders by the county to destroy his ponds and kept refilling them. This is more about government authority than it is about water. With his ponds full, Harrington's land is likely putting as much or more water downstream than it was when the pond acreage was covered in water-absorbing trees and grasses. Over time, the pond bottoms develop a kind of seal that holds water from being leaked out too quickly.  Water still percolates through to the water table, but even more goes downstream through overflow when the ponds are full.

Ironically, if Mr. Harrington had paved his land with concrete, destroying plants and trees and THEN collected the runoff, he wouldn't be in trouble. It's allowed for you to collect water from nonpermeable surfaces. So, since Mr H continued to allow much of the rainfall that hit his property to  to sink into the soil and down into the water table, he isn't allowed to collect any of what's left for his own use without paying for a permit and receiving permission to build his ponds, Actually Harrington did get a permit, but after the ponds were built, the state rescinded his permit.

Okay, so answer this question for me:  "If Oregon owns the rainfall, and if excessive amounts of Oregon State's rain falls and floods my property and destroys my home, can I sue the state for damages?"  After all, if my property, say my car for instance, crashes into your home, I have to pay the damages. I can do that because the state of Oregon forces me to buy car insurance in exchange for the privilege of driving Oregon's lovely roads.  Should Oregon then, be forced to buy flood insurance for the whole state, just in case THEIR rain wrecks my house?

This might be a fun case to present to the Supreme Court.  A more sensible ruling would be to allow the state to control streams and established waterways and prevent irresponsible damming up of shared water sources and leave rain which falls on your property to the property owner.  If you have a stream on your property, you wouldn't be allowed to dam it up, but in Oregon, with as much rain and annual flooding as they get, it seems likely they could use all the flood control ponds they could get. Harrington has even built three of them at his own expense.  

Oregon is not alone in claiming the rain as government property. Colorado does Oregon one better, claiming a right, not to just the rain after it falls, but to all the moisture in the atmosphere. There you can get in trouble for collecting rain off your roof.  The Colorado Division of Water Resources makes it clear:  “Colorado water law declares that the state of Colorado claims the right to all moisture in the atmosphere that falls within its borders and that ‘said moisture is declared to be the property of the people of this state, dedicated to their use pursuant’ to the Colorado constitution. Interestingly, in Colorado some folk have "senior" rights to the people's water, which, I think, means they acquired them before the Colorado legislature turned into a politburo. If only you have junior rights, you're just out of luck.

It's an interesting issue to say the least. I should think it would provide some real entertainment if it took a run through the Supreme Court.  But then what do I know. I'm just waiting for Jesus to come, tear it all down and start over with a New Earth, where God gives to all freely and we don't have junior and senior water rights to fight over.

(c) 2015 by Tom King