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Workers like to sleep days Rodent control crew works in Foothills Orchard for Bear Creek Corp. By MARK FREEMAN Bear Creek Corp.'s newest rodent-control crew are quiet, stay-to-themselves individuals who sleep all day and haven't yet left their home-office on a 440-acre pear orchard north of Medford. But Scott Cully, Bear Creek's director of orchard operations, couldn't be more pleased. "They're getting so big, so fast, that it's incredible," Cully croons. The objects of his affection are three 7-week-old barn owls who are Cully's first home-bred recruits in his effort to replace pesticides with raptors to cleanse the company's Foothills Orchard of unwanted rodents. They are living with their mother in one of 15 nests erected at the orchard three years ago to entice wild owls into living and hunting there. When they fledge sometime next week and start eking out a living on their own, these fast and quiet hunters each day will scarf, on average, three rats, mice, moles or gophers that steal pears or damage the orchard's precious comice trees. The intent is to get enough owls there to make any use of rat poison unnecessary, Cully says. Barn owls are increasingly getting the nod over rat bait for pesticide control nationwide, and this little slice of the pear world is a good match for them as well. "We're developing a partnership with these pieces of nature that benefit the orchard and the environment around here," Cully says. Besides, Cully's an owl-o-phile from way, way back. "I don't know if it's their stealth or the way they hunt at night," Cully says. "I've always been fascinated with owls." Barn owls are one of the more unique rodent-chowing creatures of the night. They have white, heart-shaped faces, which earned them the nicknames of "ghost owl" and "witch owl" by 17th-century zealots who killed them out of fear that they carried evil spirits. Barn owls' eyes don't move, but their heads pivot 270 degrees. And they don't hoot, but they bellow a piercing, fingernails-on-the-chalkboard screech in the night. Long-legged and knock-kneed, they grow to about 20 inches tall and fly so swiftly and silently that they can dig their talons into their prey before the little rats ever knew what hit them. And that's what makes them good squatters in the orchards, where rodents regularly eat tree roots or chew deadly circles in the bark around trunks. The gophers even do that one better - they will stuff their faces full of young pears, Cully says. "We have an endless supply of rodents here," he says. When the birds leave their nest, Cully hopes they each take up residence in some of the nearby owl houses that sit unoccupied atop old telephone poles. They could start breeding as early as next spring. But in the meantime, Cully hopes these owls find a niche in the 21st-century pear industry. "Man, do they chow down on the mice," Cully says. "That's why this works so great for us." Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.