Owl Chicks Saved From Rocketdyne Tower Near Simi

Rocketdyne technicians should be getting wise to fowl play on their grounds near Simi Valley. For the second time in a month, great horned owls have created a hooo-ha of distractions in the rocket testing fields.

In the latest incident, Rocketdyne firefighter Dean Lidstrom scaled a 100-foot test stand to rescue two owl chicks Friday.

Lidstrom, dangling on an orange rope, hovered around the opening to the tower where he knew the nest to be. A dead mouse, presumably a snack left by one of the parent owls, lay atop the tower. Just inside, the two chicks, the object of the rescue, had grown much larger than expected.

Jerry Thompson of the Raptor Rehabilitation and Release Program in east Ventura County estimated that the chicks are 1 month to 6 weeks old, instead of the 3 weeks Rocketdyne employees had guessed. A great horned owl reaches full size and maturity at 12 weeks.

“They are predators, sitting at the top of the food chain, so they’ve got to get out there and start hunting,” he said.

Lidstrom said the birds exhibited no threatening behavior as he lifted them out of their nest.

This nest was discovered about four weeks ago as technicians prepared the abandoned tower for demolition, shortly after a similar rescue operation had to be mounted to retrieve two owl eggs from another test tower, where the presence of the nest forced the company to suspend rocket tests.

Thompson said he believed the rescued birds to be one female and one male (females have bigger feet). They will be placed temporarily into the protective custody of the Raptor Rescue and Rehabilitation and eventually will be returned to the wilds of Ventura County.