We have a temporary new addition to my office. A stuffed Great Horned Owl. Staring at me with big yellow eyes, clutching a a birch log with inch-and-a-half talons. He’s sitting on the magazine table across from my desk.
Our rehab facility is undergoing renovations, all of the education materials had to be moved into storage while they work on the education offices. Most of the books and papers can survive being in a locked closet, but we didn’t want to take a chance of the taxidermied animals being munched on by critters and varmints (that happens a lot).
So the staff brought over some of the more valuable materials to my office, including this foot-and-a-half tall predator. It’s a male (much smaller than a female GHO) and not the best taxi job. He’s been at the Center for quite some time, and, from my understanding, was confiscated from someone who did not have the permits to have it in his/her possession.
The ‘ear tufts’ are cock-eyed (one points up, the other off to the side), the head is jutted forward and tilted over the right shoulder, the wings are askew, and the whole body is tipping forward. Still, it does have this unblinking aura of “I know you’re out there…” Kind of spooky. Were he not in a glass box, I’d expect him to start hooting any minute. But he’s going to stay there for a couple of months.
Definitely a conversation piece. Of course, the conversation usually starts: “EEEK!!! What in the HELL is THAT thing?!?!?! Is it alive!?!?!” So far he’s startled 4 people, including my supervisor (who was on vacation when they brought him over).
I’ve grown rather fond of him, but it’s still kind of eerie, thinking how a normal screech-owl would react. Kind of hard for me to blend in with my light oak laminate desk and bookcase.
Oooh, I love GHO. My dad built a flicker house for our yard but no flicker ever lived there. A squirrel chewed the hole a little bigger for his house, and then the next season a new resident took over. A Great Horned Owl. She would sit in the house and stick her head out of the hole and glare at the neighborhood. It looked like a cat’s head from the ground. Hilarious.
As for what to name him…
oh hell I’m not clever enough to bother offering anything. No one ever takes my suggestions on what to name their fish, dog, cat, lizard, ferret…
Doesn’t matter to me what the critter is, taxidermy creeps me the hell out. I can’t help it. I can look at skeletons all day long, but preserving the skin, hair, whatever…::shudder:: And my husband’s step-mom wants to give him his dad’s deer-mount. That’s all the hell I want is a damned dead deer staring at me across the living-room…::shudder again:: but I can’t say no because his dad said if she got rid of it after he died, he wanted hubby to have it.
Well, we already have Bogie at the center, and sadly, Booger (the female) passed away about a year ago (yes, she was a booger - nipped at anyone in her enclosure, but only if you turned your back on her).
At least I don’t have the mount of the Cooper’s Hawk attacking a weasel: too big for the table. That one is really creepy.
screech-owl, I have no idea if you’re an anime fan or not, but there used to be a show in the early 70s named Gatchaman in which various characters had secret identities based on birds. Eagle Ken, Condor Joe, Swan Jun, that sort of thing.
There used to be a Horned Owl Ryu - so there’s my suggestion.
Well my original post got eaten up by the board crash…once again with feelings. My choices for the name of the owl are either “Who”, “Hoot”, or “Bubba” Bubba coming from the latin name of the GHO bubo virginianus.
(1817-1881)
“Who stuffed that white owl?” No one spoke in the shop:
The barber was busy, and he couldn’t stop;
The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading
The “Daily,” the “Herald,” the “Post,” little heeding
The young man who blurted out such a blunt question;
Not one raised a head or even made a suggestion;
And the barber kept on shaving.
“Don’t you see, Mr. Brown,”
Cried the youth, with a frown,
“How wrong the whole thing is,
How preposterous each wing is,
How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is -
In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 't is!
I make no apology;
I’ve learned owl-eology.
I’ve passed days and nights in a hundred collections,
And cannot be blinded to any deflections
Arising from unskillful fingers that fail
To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail.
Mister Brown! Mister Brown!
Do take that bird down,
Or you’ll soon be the laughing-stock all over town!”
And the barber kept on shaving.
“I’ve studied owls,
And other night fowls,
And I tell you
What I know to be true:
An owl cannot roost
With his limbs so unloosed;
No owl in this world
Ever had his claws curled,
Ever had his legs slanted,
Ever had his bill canted,
Ever had his neck screwed
Into that attitude.
He can’t do it, because
'T is against all bird laws.
Anatomy teaches,
Ornithology preaches
An owl has a toe
That can’t turn out so!
I’ve made the white owl my study for years,
And to see such a job almost moves me to tears!
Mister Brown, I’m amazed
You should be so gone crazed
As to put up a bird
In that posture absurd!
To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness;
The man who stuffed him don’t know half his business!”
And the barber kept on shaving.
“Examine those eyes.
I’m filled with surpprise
Taxidermists should pass
Off on you such poor glass;
So unnatural they seem
They’d make Audubon scream,
And John Burroughs laugh
To encounter such chaff.
Do take that bird down;
Have him stuffed again, Brown!”
And the barber kept on shaving.
“With some sawdust and bark
I could stuff in the dark
An owl better than that.
I could make an old hat
Look more like an owl
Than that horrid fowl,
Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather.
In fact, about him there’s not one natural feather.”
Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch,
The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,
Walked around and regarded his fault-finding critic
(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic,
And then fairly hooted, as if he should say:
“Your learning’s at fault this time, anyway;
Don’t waste it again on a live bird, I pray.
I’m an owl; you’re another. Sir Critic, good-day!”
And the barber kept on shaving.
