Salem Owl's Survival Struggle Spurs Push For Action Against Rodenticides

SALEM, MA — Jess Reese immediately knew there was something desperately wrong with the screech owl she saw sitting in a pile of wet leaves and trash near the downtown Salem Post Office when she found the bird barely moving on a January Sunday morning.

The founder of Salem Wildlife Rescue was pretty sure what that something was from her previous experience tending to birds and animals suffering from secondary rodenticide poisoning.

"Her eyes were closed and she wasn't even reactive to my hands coming close to pick her up and move her," Reese told Patch of her rescue efforts. "That's not like any bird — never mind a bird of prey.

"Usually it's kind of obvious what is wrong. This owl was acting very lethargic and that means either it ingested rodenticide or was hit by a car. There was some blood on her beak and chest. It could have been an injury or the blood of something she ate. But coupling that with the behavior, I was pretty sure the bleeding was because of rat poison."

Reese said she decided she had to act — and act quickly — if the owl was going to make it. She knew the owl needed Vitamin K and oxygen and that Cape Ann Wildlife, Inc. rescue out of Gloucester had the means to take care of it. But, unable to get in touch with them right away on a Sunday, she reached out to her friend Jane Newhouse of Newhouse Wildlife Rescue, who agreed to provide emergency care for the bird if she could get it to Chelmsford.

"I didn't want this one to die when I am waiting for somebody to help," she said.

So Reese drove the owl the 40 minutes to Chelmsford where Newhouse cared for it for a couple of hours before it could be brought to Gloucester for the round-the-clock vitamin treatments that could save its life.

"I don't mind doing it when I am off from work just to help out one of these little guys," she said.

Two weeks later, Reese told Patch on Monday the little Salem owl that could barely move, when she gathered it was re-released into the wild. It was one success story in what Reese said has been a frustrating battle to show residents, businesses and city government the collateral damage that rat poison can cause.

"A lot of people don't realize what these poisons do," she said. "I am trying to raise awareness and I keep getting shot down."

Rodenticide is commonly used by restaurants and other commercial businesses to control the rat population. The rodents ingest the poison, which makes them sluggish and easier prey for the eagles, hawks and owls.

Once those raptors find a spot with easy prey, they keep going back there for food. The more infected rodents they eat, the more the poison affects the birds until they become feeble and often die.

Cape Ann treasurer Erin Hutchings told Patch in 2021 that 95 percent of birds found suffering from the poisoning do not make it.

• One North Shore Hawk's Survival Story Amid A Distressing Trend

Reese said her added frustration comes from an ensuing walk down Essex Street near City Hall where she said it only took her a couple of blocks to find overflowing trash cans, open dumpsters and two rat poison boxes in an alley doing the pest control that should be done by keeping trash and garbage secure at all times.

"You look at the trash overflowing and you wonder why there is a rat problem," she said.

While the rodenticide does kill the rats, it also can kill owls, hawks, eagles, coyotes, foxes and other animals that ingest the poisoned rats — thinning the population of the very predators who naturally control the rat and mouse population.

"Just one of these owls will eat tens of thousands of rodents in their lifetime," Reese said. "If you take away that one animal, that is thousands of rodents that are out there and reproducing thousands and thousands more rodents."

Reese said she and Newhouse have taken their concerns to the Salem Board of Health and hope a groundswell of anger over the trash and rodent problem, and the danger that the prevailing rodentcide poses to other wildlife, will put pressure on the City Council and Mayor's Office to be more proactive in finding alternative rodent control measures and enforcing rules about securing trash.

She proposed that since the tourism-funded downtown businesses are contributing to the problem through dropped food and other trash, then tourism tax dollars should be used to pay for a solution.

"We need people (in government) to know that this is something we care about and that it's important to us," she said. "You can ignore one of us. You can't ignore hundreds of us."

Reese said she first faced the true horrors of rodenticide up close a couple of years ago when she sought to save a hawk struggling near a business in the Salem State area of the city.

"He was not moving," she said. "He was just standing there looking at the ground. His tongue was yellow. I was trying to do something and all the people around were shoving their phones in his face impeding his rescue."

She said she had Vitamin K at the time and was tending to the bird on the sidewalk when the hawk's struggle to survive failed.

"I was doing triage on him when I heard this coughing sound and he sprayed blood in my face and all over my body," she said. "I am sitting there covered in this bird's blood and sobbing because it traumatized me.

"I knew what rodenticide was but until you have a bird die in her arms because it drowned its own blood you don't understand how awful it is."

She said the latest rescue has spurred her to redouble her efforts to achieve action on the dangers of rodenticide in Salem and across the North Shore.

"Just the lack of care for our wildlife is what makes me more upset than anything," she said. "There is so much more that could be done."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)