He’s been rehabilitating birds in his backyard for 42 years and counting

WILLIAMSVILLE, Vt. (InvestigateTV) - A licensed bird rehabilitator in Vermont has spent more than four decades healing injured birds, driven by a childhood memory that shaped his life’s work.“I think our kids grew up thinking every kitchen has an owl,” Fred Homer said. There’s Jasper, the crow, who didn’t enjoy this reporter’s company. And then there’s Stella, the blind-in-one-eye Barred owl, who has been a fixture in Fred Homer’s kitchen for years. His wife, Debbie Fiener, is okay with Stella... for the most part. “It’s springtime in Vermont, and the rivers running free. There’s no place else on earth that I was born to be,” Homer sings. That place is Williamsville, a hamlet in the southern Vermont town of Newfane.“I love interacting with the land,” Homer said. And wasting time could be a cardinal sin.Reporter Joe Carroll: You don’t believe in the afterlife...Fred Homer: That’s true.Reporter Joe Carroll: Does that make life even more special? Fred Homer: Absolutely... And there’s the