Wild Things: Owls And Me

By ED KANZE

In this crazy world we live in, once the word gets out that you’re keenly interested in something, say, Elvis, watch out. 

This happened to my wife, Debbie, and me. We lived happily in Mississippi for several years, and after people close to us learned we’d caught the Elvis bug, Presley-themed bling began arriving in the mail: potholders, Christmas ornaments, coffee mugs, wall hangings, and Barbie-scale dolls of the King both young and middle-aged. We curate quite a collection of the stuff, proudly and gratefully. 

And before Elvis — there were owls.

I had the Herculean chore and great pleasure once of raising two baby great horned owls. Before I knew it, I had become the Owl Guy, a label I never minded although at times it felt a bit confining. Generous friends and family members began showering me with all manner of owl gifts. I still have some of them. One was a needlepoint owl. Another was a stuffed toy owl. There were owl T-shirts and even, back in those days when I was young and single, an owl-inspired girlfriend who, I suspect, was more interested in the company of my owls than she was in me. 

But that was OK. My social horizons were limited. Better a romantic partner crazy about my birds than no romantic partner at all. Those owls also brought me platonic friends. The standouts were Claude and Lois Stephens, neighbors of the nature sanctuary where the owls and I lived and owners of a magnificent horse farm. At one point when one of my owls was making nightly visits to the Stephens’ tennis court, mistaking the enclosure for a cage where it might be fed, I would make a visit every evening. Claude and Lois provided congenial company while I treated the owl to a defrosted laboratory rat. Afterward, the owl would dissolve into the woods, and we’d repair to the house for a round of champagne. Ah, those were the days! One of my prize possessions is a Steuben glass owl Claude and Lois gave me at Christmas.

My Owl Guy persona also brought me the friendship of the world-famous photojournalist Lisl Steiner, a neighbor in my next job and home place. Lisl, a brilliant and effusive character of the first order, had photographed John Kennedy and Fidel Castro and a large fraction of other notables of her era, and I’m proud to say she photographed me, too. I have the print in my office. It shows my young self, sprawled on her lawn in Bedford, peering through a very long lens at two young barred owls, peering out of a hole in a hickory tree. Lisl became a treasured friend for the rest of her long life. 

Am I, after all these years, still the Owl Guy? Maybe I am. Owl-themed gifts don’t come in the door at anywhere near the rate they used to, and it’s been a while since an owl has brought me a glass of champagne. Still, I’m thrilled to the marrow when I hear a great-horned owl hooting out there, deep in the heart of darkness, and when I note the soft but insistent tooting of a tiny saw-whet owl, sounding like a truck’s backup beeper in our yard late at night. It brings joy to know there is no truck, and the beeper hunts mice and other small creatures and wears a coat of feathers. 

Seeing, rather than just hearing an owl, ices the cake. The one pictured here visited our bird feeder one recent winter night. It had no interest in sunflower seeds. When we first spied it, the bird was perched on a platform feeder, gazing down sternly into the snow. I suppose it was listening more than it was gazing. Suddenly down it came, taking a stab at a vole, mouse, or shrew moving beneath the snow. This time, the owl came up empty.