As far as I can tell, nothing of any interest whatsoever happened in the news today. So, we’re going to have a frank discussion about barn owls for a bit. Personally, I’ve always been a fan. I find owls to be totally sweet, but also totally creepy (in a good way). Figure 1 shows a pretty cool picture of one.

Figure 1

The barn owl is perhaps the most widespread of all the owls. This medium-sized predator is found on all continents except for Antarctica; they are scarce in the extreme northern reaches of North America and also in the Sahara Desert–but who would want to live in those places**? Not me.

Barn owls love rodents. Rats, mice, whatever–they eat them ALL. They have been known to eat more than one rodent per night and a nesting couple can consume over 1000 per year**. Figure 2 shows a barn owl flying. He’s probably looking for rats or mice.

Figure 2

These birds have really done a great job evolving. They’re pretty unstoppable and it seems like there’s no chance they’ll ever be extinct. My hat is off to barn owls. Now, I will leave you with this great film.

**All factual information taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_owl

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