From Electrolite:
You probably didn’t know owls could do that:
Neil Gaiman discovers the magic of winter in the Midwest.
Last night I went out owling, with a number of people, led by Sharon Stiteler, official bird lady of Neilgaiman.com, just like in Jane Yolen’s lovely children’s book Owl Moon.This is what happens when you go owling. You tromp through the deep snow in the darkness, until you’re on the edge of the woods. Then you play a CD of owls hooting and wait for a few moments, silently marvelling at the beautiful starry night and the almost magical stillness, at which point drunk people on snowmobiles roar past incredibly noisily.
You wait in silence, holding your breath, until the sound of snowmobiles and the hoarse singing and yells of the snowmobilers has finally died away, and then, in the pregnant, perfect stillness, you play the CD of owls hooting again, and, after a few moments, as if by magic, from nowhere you hear the sound of another bunch of drunk people on snowmobiles coming toward you.
I don’t think anyone’s done a proper scientific study on the way that recorded owl-calls can summon snowmobilers, but I think it’s pretty much magical.
Another benefit of living in the foothills of the California coast range. (1) No snow, hence no snowmobiles. (2) Owls almost every night. Big barn owls. They hoot before dawn. They hoot after sunset. They sit in the oak trees close to the house. They sit on fenceposts. They sit on the hillside and look in the kitchen window. They fly silently--the original stealth flying machine--from tree to tree. They swoop low over America's Stinkiest Silliest DogTM, who looks up at them with a wary eye. They drop owl pellets on the road.
I tell ya, the rodent population out there must be truly amazing.
Posted by DeLong at February 23, 2004 05:41 PM | TrackBack
One of the all time great Onion sidebar items. A picture of an owl, looking all harsh and owly. Caption: "Owls are @ssholes."
NB-- I think owls rule.
Posted by: Chasseur on February 23, 2004 06:17 PMIs this a good place to mention the Bush administration's insane/infuriating insistence on continuing to pollute Yellowstone with snowmobiles?
By the way, I'll put my silly Basset up against your silly Lab any day.
Posted by: Rebecca Allen, PhD on February 23, 2004 09:25 PMSnowmobilers are so wimpy, so loser-ish it's almost funny. Classic drunk dumb white guy republican nature haters.
"Yaaaaahoooooo, I can do whatever I want it's my country!!!!!"
Posted by: Truth Teller on February 23, 2004 10:33 PMI remeber a while back, a man inventing a fence wire cutter, to be installed on a snowmobile, so that if you ran into a fence the fence would be destroyed rather than the rider.
did you hear the story of the two men, who went out owling. Each mimicing an owl, and getting a response from the other. The story came out when the wives compared notes.
final owl story. Here in the north country in winter, we get the big white Artic Owl flying around in the daytime.
Sylvia has confused owls with turtles -- the culprit was the cartoon "Stanley" (about a young boy with a fish and a teleportation-enabled dictionary), from whence she learned that "owls are nocturtle".
Posted by: Jeremy Osner on February 24, 2004 06:52 AMMy parents had barn owls in the loft of their barn . Once, as an adult, I climbed a ladder to look down into their nest. The shrieks of the chicks (chicks, my foot - any of them could have taken off my little finger) were unnerving. I did not linger. Go ahead, call me a wuss.
For a taste, turn the volume up and listen here:
http://www.garden-birds.co.uk/sound/barn_owl.mp3
Play CDs of owls hooting? CDs?
If fake technological night owls are what you put out, then drunk technological night owls are what you get back. Poetic justice.
Posted by: anewc2 on February 24, 2004 08:19 AMAre you sure they are barn owls? Barn Owls tend not to "hoot", preferring a "Shree...Shree" hissing shriek - they are the inspiration for the myth of haunted houses. Big, white, heart shaped face, pure white front, light brown body with dark spots. No tufts on head.
Other options in your neck of the woods:
Great Horned Owl - hoots very loud Hoo- Wha-hoooo! Hoo! Hoo! Big, with tufts, like ears. Reddish face, dark body. Sits on top of things (trees, lightpoles, etc.)
Spotted Owl - one subspecies is the famous endangered one, Spotteds are uncommon, but not endangered. Brown, heart-shaped face disc, dark body with light spots. No tufts. Call: "Whoop! wu-hu hoo-you"
Great Grey Owl - huge, no tufts, grey. Lives near the tree-line at altitude. Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Likes poles and fenceposts.
Long-eared owl - tall, thin owl with large tufts. Hoots monotonously for extended periods - from 2 to 300 "hoo"s spaced about 2 seconds apart.
Short Eared Owl - more diurnal than most, white face, dark body with light spots, no tufts. Quieter than most owls.
Burrowing owl - lives in holes, diurnal, smaller than the others. When sitting, they sit diagonally front-to-back rather than straight up and down. They bark, like dogs.
Western Screech-owl. Small, tufted. Unobtrusive, often sits in lower limbs and watches you, without your awareness. Call is a constant pitched "hoo hoo hoo-hoo..." which accelerates, like a bouncing ball.
You also get Northern-Saw Whet owl(whistled hoot), Northern Pygmy owl(whistled hoo-hoo-hoo), Flammulated owl("Hoo, hu-doo"), but they are all smallish.
And yes, there are a lot of rodents out there.
In my view what is wrong with the economy is that the fundamental balance between labor and capital has broken down. Policies over the past couple of decades have tilted the playing field to favor capital over labor. The ideological zealots of the right have equated labor with communism looking at the fall of the Soviet Union as the triumph of capital over labor. Of course we forget that straight up capitalism, the kind these yahoos long for failed in 1929. What has survived and triumphed since then are mixed economies. Regulated markets coupled with a robust social safety net.
The Reagan years, through the extremism of the baby Bush years, have seen the playing field tilted towards inherited wealth and finance to the detriment and devaluing of labor. Part of this problem is related to the fact that we define labor to narrowly. Anyone who works for a living is a laborer. The divide is between labor and capital, not labor and management. Even managers are laborers.
Our economy looks to me like a tapestry where the vertical threads are capital and the horizontal threads are labor. They are equally important because after all, the laborer is also the consumer. But where as the power of capital is invested in itself, the power of labor is invested in collectivism. A concept the right would have us believe has been discredited by the fall of the Soviet Empire!
But yes, as a non-economist, from my perspective, what is wrong with the economy is that the fundamental relationship between labor and capital has been destroyed.
Posted by: SW on February 24, 2004 06:30 PMOwls?
Posted by: SW on February 24, 2004 06:41 PMnevermind....
Posted by: SW on February 24, 2004 06:42 PM