Wesley The Owl will appeal to any animal lover, and quite often for the wrong reasons; it drips with sentiment and emotion while distorting basic facts about barn owls. What worse, Ms. O'Brien presents herself as a biologist studying owl behavior and lends an air of
…more credibility to her account that it would otherwise not have. If I am to believe the book, then the following are presented as facts:
- A barn owl, after a stressful experience, would shun its surroundings and will itself to die.
- A barn owl mates for life.
- Owls will have nothing to do with water.
- A barn owl reaches sexual maturity at 3.5 years of age.
- After a missed landing on a table, a barn owl would be 'embarrassed' because of being laughed at.
On and on and on...for supposedly being a scientist, Ms. O'Brien engages far too often in anthropomorphic projection into her 'observations' of Wesley. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice story, but anyone familiar with barn owl rehabilitation and training understands that while they bond, they don't mate for life; owls do bathe and play in water; owls do not mentally function high enough to be capable of embarrassment; they reach sexual maturity after a year (they have to - the average age of a barn owl in the wild is two years!)
Read the book for the story, then learn the facts about owls somewhere credible like www.eraptors.org (less)
