I feel moderately inadequate around here. I have little to no expertise in any significant subject. So far I have only managed to stump the rest of the team when I made a joke about gerunds. It wasn’t even a joke, it was a regular sentence, but some people seem to assume that I can’t even be serious long enough to explain that I meant “learning” as a noun rather than a verb. Now that I think about it, I was trying to explain a rather bad joke, but never mind. Moving on.

The point is that there are plenty of experts mulling about all the time. They know all kinds of things, and they know them well. I’m very jealous. It has always been my ambition to know everything about something, but Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland doesn’t seem to count. I have really enjoyed (seriously now, no jokes, gerunds, or facetiousness) talking to the researchers, scientists, and students that share our facilities. Some have more time to talk than others (and more interesting things to say- no one is falling all over themselves to talk to the plant people).

Jeremy and I were hard at work breaking land speed records in point framing today when one such expert wandered past. Denver is the Owl Guy I mentioned in passing a few posts ago, and there is a snowy owl nest just over the ridge from our plots. Would we like to wander along? Damage from owl talons is at our own risk; Denver makes no promises.

We would, in fact, like to wander along, since we had to miss Jean and Job’s Owl Adventure for the privilege of sitting around in the whimsical airport I also mentioned in passing several more posts ago. Probably no one else in the whole town finds it even one little bit whimsical, but since my jolliness has already been established, no surprises there.

The owls were… cute, in Jeremy’s words, “Muppet-like” in mine. The nest contained six chicks of varying ages and two eggs, one of which was hatching. They looked like animatronics, but the adjacent pile of nine and a half dead lemmings really detracted from the Family-Movie-of-the-Week vibe. The number of lemmings is, in part, how Denver determines if the chicks have a deadbeat dad. He was satisfied with nine and a half, but the record he’s seen is in the seventies.

We weighed and sexed the dead lemmings, and counted the chicks. The lemmings have their feet cut of to prevent accidentally counting them twice, though information about dismembered lemmings and internal organs readily spilling from the halves is just the kind of thing that no one wants to hear about and that I want to be sure to include. Just, you know, in case I forget.

Altogether, it is a very easy procedure, but of course actually finding the nest is the first trouble. The second trouble is doing everything without sustaining damage from the adult owls, who are liable to dive with a fair amount of force. The third trouble is getting the camera focused for the baby owl photo-op.

OK, so the owls were pretty cute. Probably the cutest thing I’d seen all day, though they did actually have some competition. No one expects ‘cute’ in Barrow, but then it shows up unannounced.

No talon damage to report.