This time of year, the General Assembly Building is full of donkeys, elephants, show horses and various preening creatures.

This week they were accompanied by a one-eyed owl, a nearly blind hawk and a slick-skinned salamander.

The latter animals are part of an exhibit by the Virginia Living Museum, a nonprofit institution in Newport News.

At home and in its exhibit here, museum workers preach the need to protect native animals and plants and the lands they inhabit.

Wild lands help clean our air and water, and they draw tourists, among other benefits.

The exhibit includes the skull of a bison, now extinct in Virginia; the shell of a box turtle, which is being hurt by people who collect them for pets; and an alligator handbag, for the animal that is a conservation success story south of Virginia.

The stars, however are the living animals, including a one-eyed screech owl that's not much larger than a big potato.

No one knows how it was injured, but the museum keeps it because it can't survive in the wild.

"I've never seen a one-eyed bird before," said C.J. Sweat of Roanoke County, who was touring Capitol Square with other 4-H club participants.

Jim Drummond, an education associate with the museum, held the bird on a small stand and explained that it flies silently in pursuit of mice and other edibles.

"The prey never knows this animal is coming," Drummond said. "It's literally death from above."

The exhibit also included a red-tailed hawk with bad eyes and a tiger salamander, a eight-inch-long amphibian -- big in the salamander world -- that's rare in Virginia.

Today is the last day of the Richmond exhibit. It will be open until about 2 p.m.
Contact Rex Springston at (804) 649-6453 or rspringston@timesdispatch.com On the Web: The Virginia Living Museum: www.thevlm.org