KAHULUI — A dismembered owl was found in a box in the Costco parking lot Monday, the victim of a federal offense that carries up to a $15,000 fine.

Fern Duvall, wildlife biologist with the Division of Forestry and Wildlife of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, said he was called to recover "a female adult common barn owl, with all of its tail feathers removed and both wings removed at the shoulder."
"We found the body of a bird minus its wings and tail feathers. It was dead in a box," Duvall said.
"A Costco employee pulling in carts from the parking lot found it. It's pretty obvious someone had harvested it.”
Duvall said Tuesday that he gets up to 100 owl-related phone inquiries each year, often because people — Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian alike — perceive the owl as an aumakua, or family deity in Hawaiian culture.
"I am surmising it was with the idea of retaining the parts to be used in some sort of understanding of aumakua," Duvall said of the dismemberment. "I'm not Hawaiian, but I am always faced with trying to explain."
He said that common barn owls had been brought to the Islands in the 1950s to control rats in macadamia nut and sugar cane fields, and he attributed the mutilation to "misinformation."
A Native Hawaiian cultural specialist confirmed that traditionally Hawaiians do not possess aumakua —neither the creatures nor their body parts.
"That's not an accepted practice," said Charles Kauluwehi Maxwell Sr. of Pukalani, whose maternal aumakua is the pueo, or native owl. Hawaiians "don't possess the body of any kind of aumakua, whether it be a whale, shark, mo'o (lizard) or pueo."
"Its essence (is) handed down from generation to generation," he said, adding that in his ohana, "we were told from when we were young, if a pueo flies in front of us, it's a warning of danger, and we would pull over and be careful if we proceeded.
"But we don't possess a feather or anything like that," Maxwell said. "It's not a Hawaiian thing."
Duvall said people often mistake the common barn owl for the pueo. He said there are "huge differences" between the two creatures.
The common barn owl is light colored with tiny black specks, thus appearing "totally white" when on the wing, Duvall said. It has a heart-shaped or monkey-faced head with coal-black eyes. A nocturnal creature, it can be seen flying at night, sometimes visible in a car's headlights.
The common barn owl would be seen during daylight hours only "one-half of 1 percent of the time," Duvall said.
In contrast, the pueo, or Hawaiian short-eared owl, is "very dark": tawny brown with dark stripes covering its body. It is slightly smaller than a barn owl, and its wingspan is long and narrow in comparison to a barn owl's "more mothlike wings." A pueo's most distinguishing characteristics are its brilliant-yellow eyes with black centers and that it is a daytime forager.
"In a national park, bird-watchers can look and see the pueo skirting the tops of trees and shrubs during the daytime," he said.
Moreover, Duvall said it's against the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 to harm, kill or take an owl or its body parts and, thus, a federal offense punishable by a fine.
Hawaii statute also prohibits "taking, injuring or destroying wild birds."