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A three-week old owlet fell out of her rickety
nest high in a mature pine tree in the city of Antigo, Wisconsin one
fine spring day in 2007, forever changing the way the world looks at
owls. She was cared for at the
Raptor Education
Group, Inc. in Antigo, but the injury to her left elbow was too
severe for her to ever fly and live in the wild. So she got a
job as an education bird working at the
Houston Nature
Center through a string of serendipitous events.
Alice the Great Horned Owl is the only live
animal at the small city-run Houston Nature Center in Houston,
Minnesota (population 1,020). As the only live animal at a
facility with a staff of one person, Alice lives at the rural home
of her handler, Nature Center Director/Naturalist Karla Kinstler and
commutes to work each day.
As Alice's popularity grew, Karla thought it
might be fun to throw a "hatch-day" party to celebrate the day she
hatched in early March. With live owl programs given by Marge
Gibson of the Raptor Education Group and a few kids activities, the
International Festival of Owls had its humble beginnings.
Alice has made her mark on the world in
numerous ways. Besides touching the lives of tens of thousands
of people in educational programs, Alice also provided the impetus
for removing Great Horned Owls from Minnesota's "unprotected birds"
list (Alice now holds Special Permit #1 to recognize her work on
this issue). She also prompted Karla to begin a vocal study on
Great Horned Owls, which had never been done before. And of
course without Alice, there would be no International Festival of
Owls and no World Owl Hall of Fame.
You may also see an International Owl Center
in Houston in future years, thanks again to you-know-whooo.
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