I slept with an owl!

Well, actually, I shared a hotel room with 2 owls, a hawk and a falcon. And it was quite an adventure. I had volunteered to help staff a booth for the organization I worked for last summer. The booth was going to be in a town 3 1/2 hours south of where I live. So Kim, the educator, and I drove down the night before, in a van loaded with stuff, including 4 raptors. I must say, raptors travel much more quietly than my parrots do. YOu would hardly have known they were there. When we got to the hotel room, we decided to let three of the birds have some time out of their travel boxes. The great horned owl was placed beside Kim's bed, the Swainson's hawk was outside the bathroom, and the American Kestrel was on the desk. The burrowing owl stayed in his carrier. We offered each bird a thawed dead mouse, and all ate except the great horned owl. She was too busy looking disgruntled and hissing.

I don't know if you have ever had a chance to look at an owl close up, but they are really good at glaring and looking disgruntled. This one kept making herself really tall. Then she would glare and hiss. The "horns" are not ears, they are actually tufts of feathers, and hers were at the angle of the ears of a disgruntled cat. In fact, she reminded me very much of a peevish cat. Near her travel box, there was a wooden cabinet which had a small fridge and microwave in it. Every once in a while, she would hop from her travel box top to the top of the cabinet, with a big thud, and then she'd hop back down. It is a bit disconcerting reading in bed with a very large owl glaring at you. Anyway, eventually we turned out the light, hoping she wouldn't hoot all night. She didn't, but she did thud around a bit, although I slept through that, and she also jumped down to the floor once, which did wake me up, since Kim had to turn on the light and retrieve her.

In the morning, while Kim was in the shower, the owl decided she'd had enough of all this, and jumped down on the floor and started flapping around and crashing into furniture. So I put on the leather glove and tried to get her to perch on my hand. She wanted none of it. She laid her legs flat on the floor, puffed up, spread her wings and hissed repeatedly. I started thinking about how great horned owls can exert 500 lb of pressure per square inch with their grip, and how this owl barely knew me, and I decided I'd just let her stay on the floor and keep her from hurting herself. (All the birds were wearing jesses, which are leather straps and attach to a lead of some sort, so they can't fly away, so I could use the lead to control how far she could go.)

Owls look touchably soft, don't they?  But I wouldn't advise trying it...

The hawk, in contrast to the owl, was perfectly calm all night, and was perched in the same place in the morning as she had been at night. Before we went to bed, she was making really cute little hawk noises that reminded me of some of the noises my favorite pet parrot makes. This particular hawk is extremely mellow, and majestic looking, except when she is begging for mice. She is very interested in eating and would happily binge on mice if allowed.

 

After we boxed the two large birds, we let the burrowing owl, who is a really cute little owl, have the run of the bathroom while we were eating breakfast. Of course, he pooped on the bath mat.

Our booth was a great success. I almost got to be on the radio - there was a radio station there and the dj was going to interview me but he ended up not doing it. He kept getting the species names of the hawks wrong, which was sort of amusing. The birds all behaved well, and we answered the same questions over and over. It was fun talking to people and seeing them appreciate the birds. At about 5, we headed back home.

Here's the hawk with our fundraiser quilt, which I helped to make.  Miraculously, despite the fact that hawks are very good at projectile pooping, the quilt survived unscathed.