Dear friends, I may have been a bit optimistic about both the owls and the handsome scientists.

WHHHHHOOOO - no, the stuffed owl cannot hoot.
Neither can the dead owl being dissected by Unity College students.


I got home at 1 a.m.

1 a.m.

I'll say it again. 1 a.m.

The rain didn't help.
That there was no coffee or cookies or even a damn piece of wet toast didn't help.
And the scientists?
I want you to close your eyes and picture the type of man who would get incredibly excited about dissecting dead owls in the woods of Maine on a cold rainy SATURDAY night..
Yup. You got it. You know the physicists on the t.v. show Big Bang Theory? They had nothing on these guys: one studies the effects of arousal and excitement on sweat.
Another is developing software that will allow our cell phones to recognize by sight who is calling...or something like that. A lovely young woman studies the effects of PTSD on elephants (at least I found this topic slightly interesting!)
This was a classic case of the engineers met the biologists and it all went down hill from there.

I could have been snuggled in bed with Miss Emma warming my toes and the t.v. on and a bag of hot popcorn.

I could have gone to a hoe-down, or a jamboree, or a jazz festival or a dark, dirty bar and ordered sweet rum drinks with wild abandon.

I could have visited my son and let his wife feed me the state food of Maine: whoopee pies.

I could have lounged in a bubble bath and given myself a pedicure with the most lovely shade of blue polish I just bought from Nicole.

I could have built a fire in the fireplace here at The Mansion and I could have toasted marshmallows and watched the coals and contemplated the state of the world.

Did I do any of that? OF COURSE NOT! Instead, I watched college kids - who I think had more than one beer between them - dissect owls and play with their parts. They delighted when they found not one, not two, but THREE mice in the stomach of a Great Horned Owl.
They plucked and cut and it was disgusting. And extremely stinky.

And the trip to the woods to call and possibly hear back from the birds?
wet
cold
no owls.

Owls are WISE, remember? They were smart enough to say inside, paint their talons blue, enjoy a warm bubble bath and devour bags of popcorn mice.