{"id":134658,"date":"2023-04-25T05:26:56","date_gmt":"2023-04-25T11:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=134658"},"modified":"2023-04-25T06:12:24","modified_gmt":"2023-04-25T12:12:24","slug":"r-i-p-galileo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/25\/r-i-p-galileo\/","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. Galileo"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have some very sad news.<\/p>\n

Ten days ago my good friend Nikki Wayment, Executive Director of HawkWatch International, called to (gently) inform me that Galileo had died, I believe the day before. Galileo’s remains were being sent to the state lab in Logan to determine cause of death. Nikki requested that I keep the news under wraps until his cause of death was known.<\/p>\n

Yesterday Nikki informed me that the necropsy revealed that Galileo died from chronic liver disease.<\/p>\n

It isn’t overstating the case to say that I’m heartbroken. I loved Galileo more than any other bird, ever, and I’ve loved a lot of birds including pet parakeets when I was a young kid, many dozens of fancy pigeons I raised as a pre-teenager and a couple of pet cockatiels as an adult. OK, I did care for one of those cockatiels as much as I did for Galileo, but in a very different way. For me, in part because of the unusual circumstances involved, Galileo was special.<\/p>\n

Many of my memories of the day Mia and I rescued him from barbed wire remain as vivid in my mind today as the actual experience was nearly seven years ago when I had to cut him out of the wire in a remote area of Box Elder County. Followers of Feathered Photography know that story<\/a><\/span><\/span> well so I won’t repeat it here.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After rehab Galileo couldn’t be released back into the wild so for almost seven years he lived a pampered life as a Raptor Ambassador for HawkWatch International (HWI) here in Salt Lake City. During that time he charmed the pants off of many thousands of people across the Intermountain West during educational presentations sponsored by HWI.<\/p>\n

This is Nikki with Galileo at a HWI function I attended some years ago.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I took this photo of Galileo in his mew on one of my visits to see him at HWI. It’s a rather poor quality photo (terrible light) but it’s one of my favorites of him because I think it makes his adorable personality shine through.<\/p>\n

Galileo was one of the very few Short-eared Owls in captivity anywhere but that’s only one of the reasons he was special. He’s been described by his handlers and others as sweet, curious, charismatic, handsome and quirky. What’s not to love about that personality combination?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Galileo in his mew at HWI, contemplating his next rodential meal on the ‘grass’ in front of him.<\/p>\n

Yesterday HWI published a tribute to Galileo on their blog. Even though I’d known for 10 days that he had died, reading it for the first time last night was an emotional journey for me. If you’d like to at least partially understand why Galileo was so universally loved by those who met him, I suggest you read it too.<\/p>\n

Here’s the link<\/a><\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have some very sad news. (3 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,8,356],"tags":[6864,6863,1432,1793,4949,6865,2207,279,6866],"class_list":["post-134658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-short-eared-owls","tag-cause-of-death","tag-galileo-has-died","tag-hawkwatch-international","tag-necropsy","tag-nikki-wayment","tag-raptor-ambassador","tag-rehabilitation","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-tribute"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/galileo-0046b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-z1U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134658"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134727,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134658\/revisions\/134727"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}