First, the caption contest will be decided by tomorrow morning–perhaps we’ll pick the winner at Birds and Beers tonight?
Second–I love my readers. I love that you teach me something new all the time. How on earth would I have learned about a website dedicated to Feral Children? Why is that not a show on The Learning Channel?
Third, I totally thought I had a perfect blog entry the other day about a pair of cardinals that were doing a mating display in my apartment and checking out an empty onion bag on my couch as a potential nest site. I even got incredibly excited when Cinnamon hopped up next to the onion bag and the male cardinal tried to puff up and drive her off, but she tried to nibble his tail…then I woke up to blog it and then realized that wow, that was some powerful cold medicine.
Fourth and speaking of fever dreams, I DID NOT TAKE THE FOLLOWING PHOTOS, but they are making the rounds in the email inboxes, so if you haven’t seen them check out this great gray owl (I think that was seen Montana, I have no idea if it is recent):
If you you know who took these photo, let me know–I’d love to give them their props. It’s a partially albino great gray owl…although, I don’t think we’re supposed to call them partially albinos anymore, according to Birding I think we are supposed to call this partial amelanism (because you know, ornithologists like to make things simple for the general public).
Shnifty bird.
UPDATE: WE KNOW WHO TOOK THE PHOTOS! Thanks to knowledgeable blog readers we now know that the photos were taken by Cheryl Farmer in Montana and you can read more about this bird at the Prairie Ice Blog (which looks like a cool photography blog). Thanks, John!
JEEZ! I already thought Great Gray Owls were beautiful–I gotta say, that is one nifty-looking bird! Very beautiful. Also…very strange-looking. I would love to see that bird while birding.
As for the feral children–TLC did once do a special on a boy raised by dogs, another boy raised by wolves, and a girl who had been locked in her room since she was 6 that didn’t communicate with people when she was finally released by her parents at age 14. (shocker!) She was very aggressive. She was fed; they slid meals under the door. It was creepy, but hard not to watch, which is seemingly everything on TLC. The term “feral children” cracks me up a bit, although it probably shouldn’t….Cool “fever dream” by the way. Funny
now that is a very cool looking bird, no matter what the experts call all that white.
Hi Sharon,
You can find out more about this owl here. http://prairieice.blogspot.com/2008/02/more-about-partial-amelanistic-great.html
They were taken my Cheryl Farmer near Bozeman, MT and have been posted at the Montana Outdoor Birding Group site here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MOB-Montana/
That’s freakin’ weird.
I can imagine the conversation at the nest when it hatched:
“Honey! What the Hell is THAT?? You said that it was over with that smarmy Snowy guy you met in Minneapolis!!!”
>>Why is that not a show on The Learning Channel?
They did! I watched it for research for a book I was working on.
That owl is pretty awesome! I’m always fascinated by albino birds…or partial amelanism…
Glad I could be of service!
I spent several hoursl ooking around that website some time ago… it’s both amazing and sad! I think one of the most moving accoutns is in the ‘personal experiences’ section… the one in the middle written by ‘Kitty’..
I recommend everyone give it a look over. It’s a personal account from a ‘feral child’… 40-something now, somewhat neglected for the first 4 years of her life. Looking at her, it’s not hard to see how taking the neglect to a more extreme point could result in a twittering little boy or a stay dog of a girl.
The story of Madonna is also a very sad read… A caretaker’s account of the story of a girl who’d very likely been sold for drugs, and made to “perform” for people. She was saved at the age of 6/7.
It might be easy to believe these stories to be made up, but they aren’t.. one of my (adopted) aunts… well, she’s similar to Madonna. Not nearly as extreme…But she resented my grandparents a long time for what they’d done (taking her away from a life where she was given money so freely for so little workand everyone told her that she was so beautiful…)
and even I, at 24 years old, have only met her once or twice. The last time I saw her was my grandfather’s funeral (she didn’t come to grandma’s, thought she apparently showed up for about 6 hours when The End Was Near for her ).
I was one of the people to first greet her. and I could see her pause, look at me, then draw in a deep breath, in preparation for dealing with these…. people. A false smile was plastered on her face, “You must be ColbyWolf!” followed by a stiff hug.
I know the rest of my family quite well. It always confused me why she didn’t want to be around us. Some of my other family i don’t see as much, I can understand. we’re spread from one side of the US to the other and it’s not always easy. but even then at grandpa’s funeral when we had EVERYONE there and EVERYONE was ready to do our best to send him off to the very best and enjoy our time together as a family… we saw her for an hour that day when she arrived. At the funeral, and at the dinner right there after. They were the first to leave.
I use they because she’s married. He’s rich, from what I understand. Just like what she always said (according to my dad) she’d marry.
There are a lot of other stories I could tell about her from my father, and his siblings, about her behavior right after they adopted her, how she…. enlightened boys several years older than her to things… but… that’s not my place to say.
sorry to ramble so but I guess this has been rumbling around in my head for a bit.
Is my aunt feral? no, but she, too, is developmentally “retarded” in some fashion. It really does happen. To real people! and probably far more often then we like to think. For every wolf girl, or confined child we find, for every cat collector or dog hoarder we find… how many go lost?
also: awesome dream…
I need to watch that special.
and that is an AWESOME looking bird!