You may know about the Christmas tradition Elf on the Shelf.  The tradition holds that during the Christmas season, the family’s adopted elf finds a comfy spot to perch to watch over the kids to observe whether they are being naughty or nice.  Every night the elf flies off to the North Pole to report to Santa about the kids.  Once the reporting is complete, the elf flies back to his adopted home to perch in a different spot.  Each morning the children of the house search until they find the elf’s new observation spot.  Well we have our own new summer tradition: Owl on the shelf.

Let me explain.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the problem we were having with sparrows roosting in the dog runs and leaving their dropping behind.  You can read that post here.  We needed to find a way to discourage the sparrows from using the kennels so we decided that maybe a predator would discourage them.  But what kind of predator and where do we get one?  An owl.  Yep an owl might work.  Except owls are few and far between in our neighborhood so it was off to the local garden center to buy a plastic one.

To be effective, the predator should not be in the same spot all of the time.  And it hasn’t been.  Each morning when I take the dogs out, the owl is perched in a different spot on top of the kennels, or sometimes it is over on our patio furniture.

Maybe our owl has flown off to the North Pole to report on the brown dawgs?  Nah, it is just hubby moving it around to a different spot each evening.

As far as being effective, I would say that it has definitely discouraged the sparrows.  As time goes on fewer and fewer seem to be roosting in the runs.  A few brave sparrows still sneak in when the owl is not looking, but on the whole the kennels are much cleaner.  Our owl on the shelf is here to stay, at least for as long as the sparrows are around.