YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — Long considered the smartest inhabitants of the avian world, owls living in Yellowstone National Park (YNP) are being put to work.
Nascent nonprofit the Mammoth Environmental Owl Workshop (MEOW) has launched a pilot program to train great grey and great horned owls to help beautify their home in YNP. For decades, tourists have ditched all manner of refuse in the park, dropping hats and tossing coins into world-famous thermal features. Through this new program, the owls will be coercively trained to retrieve garbage from the ground.
Biologists from Northern Wyoming Community College will partner with MEOW to monitor the owls’ ability to follow basic instructions. Owls that succeed in picking up a fallen hat or water bottle can transport the trash back to MEOW headquarters in exchange for a live rodent meal.
“We think this is a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, as it were,” MEOW Chief Scientist Nora Burdfloo told Buckrail. “The park gets cleaned up, and owl specialists can work directly with the birds to test just how expansive their cognitive abilities are. It’ll be kind of like the owls who bring mail to Hogwarts. Have you seen Harry Potter?”
Yellowstone is home to numerous owl species, including the barn owl and Western screech owl. Boreal owls, which also live in the park, will be excluded from the program on the basis of their nubby talons.
The park is asking that visitors who observe the owls at work not to disturb or taunt them. Any human caught saying things like “bird-brains” or “trashy toes” will be promptly ejected from the premises.
Editor’s note: If you’re saying, “Hoo came up with this wild idea?,” remember that today is April 1! This silly idea is just a joke. Happy April Fools’ from Buckrail!
