If you had a trap door into your attic that was in your living room, and it was a wood frame with SCREEN on it, and it was situated very nicely, directly beneath a lovely beam, perfect for a perch, and you had a friendly neighborhood owl or two living in your attic, dropping less than lovely items on your living room furniture, what would you do??? You see in this photo our gardener, Antonio, up on the roof, blocking the owl’s access into the attic. We thought that would work. The first few mornings, around about his/her normal landing with scrabbling claws on tin time of 5 am, it seemed that the wire fences worked. But, no, the owl still gets in and continues to live in the attic. Instead of doing away with this natural predator (which I must confess was my leaning) of snakes and rodents (which I hate worse than early morning noise and droppings in my house), we decided to put a primeval torture device on the beam over the trap door. Our buddy, Karl Noren, devised a way to have a bunch of nails sticking up from that particular part of the beam, so, no more perching above the trap door, therefore no more droppings on the armchair! Hurrah! No bloodshed! Hurrah! Well, except for those rats and mice and reptiles, ugh, that dare to get in the way of our “pet” owl!
