DURHAM, N.Y. (AP) \u2014 Shoppers in upstate New York earlier this month turned up a rare find while perusing a local antique store this month: tucked next to a cookie jar made in the shape of a chicken was a live owl resting peacefully on a shelf.<\/p>\n
The state Department of Environmental Conservation said Friday that the incident happened on Feb. 21 in the hamlet of East Durham, about 127 miles (204 kilometers) north of Manhattan.<\/p>\n
The agency said customers at The Market Place had spotted \u201csomething extremely lifelike\u201d on one of the shelves and alerted store staff.<\/p>\n
Environmental conservation police officers arrived to find a brown-and-white owl perched on a shelf with its eyes firmly shut.<\/p>\n
The department said officers gently cradled the sleeping owl to remove it from the store, and then released it into a wooded area, where it flew into a nearby tree.<\/p>\n
The bird, an eastern screech owl, is nocturnal and typically nests in tree cavities.<\/p>\n
It is not immediately clear how it got inside the store. An email was sent to the store\u2019s owners on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DURHAM, N.Y. (AP) \u2014 Shoppers in upstate New York earlier this month turned up a rare find while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-498703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}