Barn owl family halts removal of nutcracker
ROSEBURG, Ore. — All this barn owl family wants is the chance to raise their children in a stable home.
A 41-foot, 18,000-pound, coconut-crushing stable home that workers were planning to dismantle with a 10-ton crane.
The massive wooden nutcracker erected in River Forks Park couldn’t be removed Tuesday because the owls are a federally protected species.
Construction workers who arrived to dismantle the toy found a nest with six eggs and a hatchling near the quarter-horsepower engine, which is used to power the statute’s coconut-crushing jaw.