Wesley the Owl

On Valentines Day 1985, biologist Stacey OBrien adopted Wesley, a baby barn owl with an injured wing who could not have survived in the wild. Over the next nineteen years, OBrien studied Wesleys strange habits with both a tender heart and a scientists eyeand provided a mice-only diet that required her to buy the rodents in bulk (28,000 over the owls lifetime). She watched him turn from a helpless fluff ball into an avid communicator with whom she developed a language all their own. Eventually he became a gorgeous, gold-and-white macho adult with a heart-shaped face who preened in the mirror and objected to visits by any other males to his house. OBrien also brings us inside Caltechs prestigious research community, a kind of scientific Hogwarts where resident owls sometimes flew freely from office to office and eccentric, brilliant scientists were extraordinarily committed to studying and helping animals; all of them were changed by the animals the