It’s this strong visual tracking and alertness that makes her the first thing most visitors clock when they enter the site, and honestly, it tends to freak them out a bit. Your hair stands up and you’re instantly aware you’re being studied by a predator. People stop in their tracks to stare back.

But stare or no stare, Great Horned Owls are still nocturnal and so our esteemed colleague stays put chilling. The guests all go wowwww I wonder what she must be thinking? And she stands mysteriously still.

This is why it came as a big shock when one day, during a normal pathway sweeping, she decided to launch full kill mode on the maintenance guy.

This bird has an injury that prevents release, but she’s flighted with a 5-odd foot wingspan. Long term state of the art vet care has made her pretty much the maximum hugeness and buffness her species can attain. So it was the wee hours of the morning, Maintenance Guy sweeping between the aviaries by headlamp light, when the full mass of this aerial hunting machine crashed claws-first into the glass of her enclosure, inches from his head. She knows there’s glass there, by the way. She can avoid it. At that moment she just didn’t care.

So Maintenance Guy yelps and staggers back. Owl has managed to reorient on a branch and is now staring at him, pupils constricted, fully fluffed up and hooting a contralto territorial threat call. Maintenance Guy has been working here, trusted by the critters, for like 8 years. But now he can barely get a whoa hey whoa in before she swoops the glass again, collides, scratches her way down, and winds up on the ground flared up and locked in like the hounds of hell are at her door. Of course we don’t want her attacking the wall, she’ll hurt herself. Thus Maintenance Guy, now apparently first on his old friend’s shit list for no reason, has to scamper back inside and call off cleaning for the morning.

He reports it to the vet staff and they go to check on her. They approach one at a time with great caution, only to find the Great Horned Owl once again situated back up on her branch, big chilling. One at a time, with great caution, they enter the enclosure and look around for weird changes and uhhh digestive signs of illness. But nothing looks off, and the owl continues big chilling.

Everyone’s scratching their heads. The rest of the day goes by smoothly, even when Maintenance Guy walks past on rounds. No trace of threat or stress behavior at all. It seems the shit list is cancelled. Now it’s our turn to stare deep into her piercing yellow eyes, her ever-watchful gaze, and wonder - what must she be thinking?

It took 3 more incidents like this for us to figure out that she’d started a territorial rivalry with the mop.

Owls, everyone.

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