Word: owl
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...Promising two nubile pre-frosh he would “show them a good time” Saturday night, Harold G. Penninger ’02 instead got staggeringly high and left the pair in a dark, sweaty hellhole. The girls escaped the Owl basement shaken, unhurt and planning to attend Yale...
Over the past few summers I have seen ten to twenty Northern Spotted Owls while working in the field with the Olympic National Park owl crew in Washington State. Today, a chance sighting of a spotted owl in the wilds is a rare and miraculous event; the population has dwindled to a few thousand birds. Forced from the dwindling groves of spruce and hemlock trees, the owls have retreated slowly westward over the last few decades. Now, just miles from the Pacific, in the low river valleys beneath the Olympic mountains, the spotted owl is living out its numbered days...
...National Park, of course, the owls are protected from these intrusions. Discreetly nesting fifty or a hundred feet off the ground in huge, old trees, the protective adult owl and the shy chicks make for elusive subjects. I have spent many rainy hours in the silent forest, negotiating rock-strewn ravines, climbing over soft rotting logs and thrashing through wet underbrush—all the while hooting for the birds that are harder to find every year...
...civilization’s disruptive development, extinction is now a regular part of life on earth: scientists estimate that between 35 and 150 species die off every day. The case of the spotted owl, however, is politically noteworthy, as the fate of the owls has become something of a cause celebre. For decades, environmentalists have invoked the Endangered Species Act and the spotted owl’s protected status in efforts to preserve tracts of unspoiled wilderness...
This era may be coming to an end, as the species loses the territory it needs. Symbolically, the disappearance of the spotted owl may be a demoralizing blow to those interested in preserving some of our last wild places. Losing a species is hard, especially one that is the mascot of the environmental movement. More importantly, however, if we cannot save a high-profile species like the spotted owl from extinction, the situation is desperate indeed...