I should have gone with two entries.
Nearly every day I spend some time with two kids. As a rule, the boy gets all snappy and defensive every time I walk into his room. I'm still struggling a bit to form a personal connection with the guy (he thinks he's so tough), but I guess we're progressing in the form of grumpy tolerance. It's something. The girl is a bit easier to interact with, although she can be a stubborn little punk. If she's hungry enough she's quite agreeable. She'll sit patiently, waiting for me to tear off a leg or tidbit of fleshy quail breast. Such moments are the best part of my job.

I work at the university's wildlife pens, and the kids in question are a Spotted/Barred Owl hybrid and a Peregrine Falcon. I am lucky enough to be the primary trainer, although I lack experience training raptors. Working with trained birds on the glove is close enough, I guess. For a while I was making it up as I went along, then mini-freaked out that I might be doing things entirely wrong and perhaps ruining the birds. Excuse me, where is the instruction manual for this owl? But I now have a loaned copy of "Raptors in Captivity," according to which my approach has been pretty much spot-on (at least the bits within my control). Hurrah! It is a relief to read things like 'Some raptors, such as owls, are not food-motivated. When you approach them they're more likely to sit still rather than bate, while exhibiting normal aggressive behaviors such as raising its hackles.' The Sparred does this exactly-- raising his feathers and spreading his wings to look 2-3 times bigger! Training animals is largely common sense, I am told, but it is encouraging to see ones training strategy recorded in a reputable text. Thanks to Sleepless Evil for the recommendation. Slowly, slowly, I will 'man' these birds!... as long as we don't let the peregrine get fat.

Training the sparred owl reminds me of the group trip I took last April and never wrote about (flashback sequence). The goal of the outing was to see the famous, endangered, reclusive Spotted Owl. A caravan of station wagons and SUVs headed up north and traversed down windy gravel roads deep into private timberland. Passing through the patchwork of recently-harvested, growing, and mature stands, our guide stopped us and distributed orange hard hats. A gaggle of hard-hatted, mostly middle-aged birdwatchers tromped down a wooded path... we stopped... and a spotted owl silently swooped in as if she was on an automatic timer. We ooohed. We ahhhed. Cameras appeared and we took many pictures of our wide-eyed, statuesque subject. Her mate entered like a shadow and alit on a nearby branch. More oohing. More ahhhing. More picture-taking.

And now for the main event. Our guide handed one of the participants a stick, then retrieved a white mouse from his magical wooden box with air holes. He placed it on the end of the stick, and now the owls seemed really interested. The female glided down in a perfect quadratic curve and snatched the puzzled rodent. Its hind legs twitched fanatically before she gulped it down headfirst. Tasty. The stick was passed for another to try.

It struck me as supremely odd to be in the middle of the forest, miles away from more humanized areas, feeding wild nocturnal raptors as if we were in a petting zoo. It felt... artificial. The tourists are here, cue the spotties. But it was such marvelous artificial! There were still unexpected surprises, such as the female flashing her brood patch and the male offering a twitching mouse to his mate with timid coos. :D I'm a sentimental sap for such displays in critters, although PDAs in humans make me gag. In short, owls = fun. Owls + lab mice = reliable fun.