Alice News

Alice News is an e-newsletter detailing the private life of Alice the Great Horned Owl.  Messages are sent whenever something of some significance happens in Alice's life.  This could be as often as once a day or as rare as once every few weeks.  You'll find out when she has a "hoot-out" with the neighbor Great Horned Owls, when she gets nesty, if she ever gets ambitious enough to kill anything more than a cricket, and so on.

Alice is a Great Horned Owl who was permanently injured when she fell out of her nest in Antigo, WI at three weeks of age in 1997.  She broke her left humerus right at the elbow joint, dislocated her elbow, and did damage to the nerves in that joint.  Because of her injuries, she cannot fly well enough to live in the wild and therefore works as an education bird at the Houston Nature Center in Houston, MN through permits from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.  

Although she works at the nature center, she lives at home with me (Karla Kinstler, the nature center director/naturalist.)  Since Alice thinks she's human, this allows her to get plenty of human attention (she thinks I'm her mate) as well as plenty of exercise, since she's not tethered at home.  

Most education birds live in outdoor pens, but Alice actually lives in our home.  It's not what we started out to do, and it's a long story, but basically Alice is just a wee bit on the spoiled side.  (Living in the house also helps to keep her safe from West Nile Virus, which is usually fatal to Great Horned Owls.)  Although it may sound like fun to have an owl living in the house, I can guarantee all the poop-cleaning, pellets & feathers everywhere, and all-night hoot-a-thons leave a lot to be desired.  Owls do NOT make good "pets" in any way, shape or form and have very demanding needs.

The goal of this newsletter is to give you an inside look into the behavior of a human-imprinted Great Horned Owl and all the trials and tribulations of living with such an owl.  Believe me, I wish there was a book called "How To Be A Male Great Horned Owl"!

To subscribe to Alice News, click here, enter the word "subscribe" in the subject line, and send the message.

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By subscribing to Alice News you'll get more photos than are posted on the weblog version, plus you'll get audio files too!

Your Alice News e-newsletter will come to you from "Karla Kinstler" with the return address of karlaowl@acegroup.cc.  You may want to add this address to your e-mail filter as an acceptable address if you choose to subscribe.