Ferndale Owl Deaths

Please keep an eye on pets and children in the Marshall/Livernois area, there seems to be a business extensively poisoning and it's moving up the food chain.

*** This screech owl suffered and ultimately died due to failures in knowledge, options, and empathy. Our SW Ferndale neighborhood is now less one more ally in our fight against rats.

Ferndale Rat Patrol has been performing outreach and providing assistance to residents in Ferndale and beyond since 2016. Our group is an amazing resource to leverage if you have questions regarding how to keep your home or business rat-free. I personally have spent countless hours lecturing, setting traps, burrow busting, cleaning yards, tracking & mapping activity, providing guidance, and dispatching rats- not just in Ferndale, but all throughout SE MI.

I'll happily do it all a million times over if it means that I can prevent another owl or non-target animal from succumbing to secondary poisoning. Each and every death weighs on me heavily. This one, being so close to home, is especially hard. I feel a deep guilt that I wasn't able to help whoever felt the need to place the anti-coagulant poison that moved its way up the food chain and killed this owl.

I'll be restarting the lectures and educational outreach again on behalf of Ferndale Rat Patrol, this time through online platforms. We'll be having conversations regarding the use of pest control products around our city, and Ferndale is already planning out better ways to manage waste and sanitation issues in our downtown. We're on it.

My ask of all of us is this: keep talking about it. Spread knowledge of how to effectively eliminate rats without poison. Check your backyard for burrows and signs of rats. Pick up food waste when you encounter it on walks. Store your trash in metal or rodent-proof containers. Pick up after your dog. And please, never hesitate to ask for help.

Many thanks to my amazing neighbors for being on board and having compassion for local wildlife and the environment.