Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and his Girl by Stacey O'Brien

Stacey O'Brien was an owl researcher at Caltech when she was offered an incredible opportunity by her boss: to take care of an orphaned and unreleasable baby Barn Owl. But taking care of him would be no easy task: though he could survive on milk for a few days, he would have to begin eating mice as a diet fairly quickly, and she would have to be the one to supply them.

Stacey was amazed and delighted by the offer. And although she hated killing *any* animal, even mice, she would do so for the baby owl who soon became her constant companion. She named her new friend Wesley, and took him home and into her life. Soon, she and Wesley were inseparable. Since she was the first thing he saw after he opened his eyes, he imprinted on her, thinking Stacey was his mother.

She fed him, cuddled him, and took care of him, killing him feeder mice and feeding him the mice, at first cut into bits, and later whole... up to 28000 of them in his lifetime. Afterwards, she had to clean up the castings, and his poop, which was much the same as any other bird's.

But unlike many birds used as pets, Owls live for a long time, at least 15 years, and though Stacey eventually left Caltech for other jobs, Wesley was an inseparable part of her life. Through her close-up observations of Wesley, she discovered many previously unknown things about Barn Owls, from the fact that they would drink water, to the fact that Wesley liked taking showers right alongside her. He even learned to tolerate and then enjoy being blow-dried after his "baths", and later he came to think of Stacey as his mate, complete with trying to fertilize her arm.

And later on, when he was growing elderly, and Stacey herself fell sick with a type of brain tumor that causes intense migraine headaches and even strokes, he was there with her, cuddling with her, napping against her while she napped, and never failing to give her love and affection. But could there ever be a happy ending for Wesley?

I was totally sucked into this story from the moment I started reading, and I enjoyed every single word. I loved reading about how Wesley and Stacey were cuddling, and how she carried him around everywhere with her when he was a baby, complete to a baby carrier in the grocery store. But the shock people would experience when they asked to "See the baby" was almost funny, since several of them asked if he was a baby dinosaur!

Wesley's story as he grows from a baby to a teenager to an adult is fascinating, as Stacey reveals what she discovered about Wesley, and about other barn owls. So much of his stranger behavior seems to be him modelling his behavior on what Stacey, his "mother" was doing. He would "wash his face" by dipping it into a bowl or cup of water, and "brush his beak" by grabbing a toothbrush. His later antics in the shower and bathtub came because he would see Stacey bathing, and apparently wanted to do the same.

Life with Wesley wasn't always safe, either. He scratched her face once when he tried to land in her hair, and he injured her with his extremely sharp beak more than once. But he always seemed to know that he had done wrong, and would go and turn away from her, as if he was ashamed. Suffice to say, Wesley was definitely a character, and reading this wonderful book made me both laugh and cry at Wesley's antics. I recommend this book as highly readable and intensely fascinating. I certainly would not have thought that a Barn Owl would make a wonderful companion, but this book, and Wesley and Stacey, proved me wrong.