Saving Gamma from gitchi-gami (Lake Superior)
By David C. Smith (Minnesota 1970)
As has become our custom, my wife JoEllen and I celebrated this New Year’s with our good friends, Wendy and Mike McBain, at their home on the North Shore of Lake Superior* just south of Grand Marais, Minnesota. That’s just 60 miles down the coast from Canada. They shared this story:
One morning in early December, Wendy spotted a white object floating in the lake. With binoculars she saw that it was an owl! Northern Lake Superior is unbearably cold even in July and August, much less December. Mike hurriedly dressed and rushed out with thought about getting the canoe from storage, but discovered that the owl (a male) had washed ashore and was huddled on the pebble strewn beach. (see photos)
As advised by The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota's College of Veterinary Medicine, Mike approached the bird cautiously, and seeing that it was unable to fly, gathered it up in a towel. He found that several rocks were frozen to it, which he and Wendy carefully removed. They brought the owl inside where it recovered somewhat. Then the McBain's drove the owl 40 miles down Hwy 61 to Sugarloaf Cove Nature Center, where they met a DNR conservation officer who transported it to Duluth and then on to the Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Veterinary Medicine in St. Paul.
Snowy owls are at home in Arctic regions, where the seasonal abundance of their favorite prey, lemmings, can very greatly. When lemmings have a boom year, snowy owls over produce, and the excess owls face starvation in the ensuing lean years. That’s when they venture down around the Great Lakes in search of prey, which is usually small rodents, but they occasionally try to use their sharp talons to snatch fish out of the lake. Perhaps that’s how this one wound up in Superior’s icy waters, or perhaps it was knocked down by a territorial eagle or just fell from exhaustion.
Nature can be cruel, and despite our best efforts often only the strongest survive. This snowy owl received the best urgent care, including a blood transfusion. But sadly, it was so severely depleted by starvation that he could not recover his strength and had to be put down. The Raptor Center has, however, enjoyed many successes and has several owls among its current patients. The lovely but ill-fated snowy white owl was a rarer challenge.
On Saturday, brothers from the Rho Phi Chapter at Rose-Hulman volunteered with the Noon Optimist Club for their Clothe-A-Child event at the Terre Haute Walmart. Brothers helped local children shop for new, properly fitting clothing. This year, 800 kids (from kindergarten - 5th grade) received new coats, sweatshirts, pants, etc. for free.
To learn more about this year's Clothe-A-Child event, watch the video here.
Mississippi State brothers Leroy Torres (2022) (left) and Austin Molnar (2022) (right) were awarded the Chapter's Toward Excellence Scholarship, recognizing high achievement in scholarship, community service and leadership.