News From The Mews

When I enter Otto's mew, I instinctually try to be as silent as possible. I don't want to spook the Great Horned Owl, after all. But then my mentor reminded me that predators slink along quietly. She suggested that I talk to him to make it clear that I'm not a predator trying to sneak up on him. I understood the assignment, but found it difficult. I'm a naturally quiet and concise person and have a hard time chattering away without a structured conversation. Otto keeps his eye on me when he has food enrichment in his talons. When my daughter was born, I got the same recommendation. You must talk to your baby to strengthen brain development and language skills. I was surprised how easy it became to narrate my day to a little human. Luckily my newly acquired parenting skill transferred into Otto's mew. Now I find a stream of words coming out of my mouth during training sessions as I describe where I'm moving, what the glove is doing, and what type of treats are in...

It was time for a beak trim for Otto the Great Horned Owl. As long as he was down for the procedure, I also planned to replace the leather equipment on his legs. I cut off the old anklets with difficulty, navigating around bunches of fluffy leg feathers, and was surprised how stiff the leather felt. I tried folding the old leather strip in half and heard a snap. It was so brittle that a crack had formed along the length! The leather didn't break completely, but it was still good that I had replacement parts ready to go. These new strips were lathered in a protective grease to keep the leather supple until their next replacement. 

I'm at the kitchen counter preparing dinner and my husband walks through the room. He wraps his arms around me and I nearly jump out of my skin because I wasn't expecting it. The surprise made even a sweet gesture not very enjoyable.  Now imagine I'm preoccupied with eating my meal and someone suddenly pokes me with a needle - my annual flu shot. Yikes! That would be very upsetting.  What if I knew that injection was coming? What if I could consent to it? Wouldn't that make the unpleasantness of a painful poke a little bit better? That's the idea with "predictor cues," a concept I learned from cat trainer Tabitha Kucera. One method she uses to give cats voluntary injections is Pet-Pinch-Poke . She says "pet," telling the cat that she is about to touch them. Then she says "pinch" before tenting the skin and "poke" before inserting the needle. The cat knows what is coming with each step, taking the surprise out of the interacti...

I stepped gingerly into Otto's mew, unsure how I would be received. The last time I was there, just a few hours earlier, I had to catch the owl for his scheduled beak and talon trim. Would he hold a grudge against me after the procedure? I set the scale on the ground just like I did every day. I offered Otto a mouse tidbit - he took it eagerly - and tapped on the scale. After just a moment's consideration, Otto jumped down to the scale and reached for another tidbit. I maintained my calm demeanor as we finished the session, but I had a little dance party going in my head. I celebrated that Otto may not like "Haley-the-Bad-Guy," but he still trusted "Haley-the-Mouse-Tidbit-Provider."

  One of my favorite things about sub-zero mornings is seeing Otto's frosted eyebrows. Moisture from his breath condenses on his brows and freezes. It had started to melt away by the time I took this photo, but you can still see some droplets frozen above his eyes.  Sometimes I feel bad for the birds sitting out in the cold all night. But Otto's many layers of feathers are so good at insulating that not enough heat can escape to melt the frozen droplets. Great Horned Owls really are built to live all seasons in the Northwoods! 

  Great Horned Owls are fierce predators. They are sometimes known as "tigers of the night" and often hunt animals like snowshoe hares or skunks. These larger prey animals would require the owl's sharp, hooked beak to rip them into bite-size pieces.  Otto also loves to rip and shred with his beak. But he is on a carefully calculated diet so his meals tend to be made up of smaller items like mice. He can swallow even a large mouse in one gulp! We still give him the opportunity to rip and shred by hiding his mice inside layers of toilet paper tubes, newspaper, or egg cartons. By the end of his meal, all of that paper is reduced to confetti that I get to clean up later. We appreciate everyone that donated tubes and cartons for the birds over the last few months. We received so much that we ran out of storage space! If you have more to donate to the birds, please hang on to them and check back with us in a few months to see if we can accept more donations.

 As we approach the end of the year, here's a look back at some of our animal ambassador highlights from 2023.

During Cable's Fall Fest last Saturday, I had to watch Otto's body language carefully to see how he was feeling. Could I ask him to go in his crate during our training session? Or was he too worried about all of the activity in town? He was definitely concerned about Cable's autumnal festivities. But he was also interested in food. So we kept our training session simple. He got a treat when he turned his attention back to me. Watch the video to see how his body language changes and how I assess his posture and feather positions to determine how he's feeling.

I was preparing for the first MuseumMobile school visit of the year and jotted a quick note for my coworkers on a post-it: "Please feed Aldo and Carson, but I'll train Otto this afternoon." Even though I was in a rush to leave on time, I paused, then added another word to my note so it read: "...I'll train with Otto..." How different are those phrases? Maybe not very different. But they have subtle meanings that can reflect how I approach animal training. "I'll train Otto."   This phrasing doesn't sit well with me because it feels more forceful. I feel like it means "I'll make him follow my commands." Traditional training methods come to mind. With dogs, that might mean yanking on their leash or using a prong collar. With owls, that might mean chasing them around the mew until they finally step on your glove. Not very fun for the animal. "I'll train with Otto." With . That one little word transforms this sentence...

Sometimes we need to be the bad guy. When that happens, I don a fluorescent trucker hat (the "bad guy hat"), safety glasses, and heavy welding gloves. Routine medical care requires this safety equipment and a brief period of restraint while I clip talons, replace leather equipment, and trim their beak. It was Otto's turn earlier this week. The whole event went smoothly and he returned to his freshly cleaned mew looking a little disheveled, but in one piece.  I checked in on his camera periodically over the next few hours to see how he was recovering. He looked just fine, if a little jumpy at noises outside. As our normal afternoon training time approached, I was nervous to find out how he felt about me. Would he be afraid of me now after I grabbed him? I cut up large chunks of mouse and prepared to do an easy session with Otto. The pattern games we've been practicing were the perfect way to test how he was feeling. I entered the mew with a little extra hissing from Ot...

I just can't get enough of pattern games. In addition to the 1, 2, 3 game , Otto the Great Horned Owl and I have been practicing Super Bowls. The original version of this game starts with a row of bowls on the floor. You start with your dog (or cat) at one end and wait for your pet to look up at you. When they do, you step forward and place a treat in the next bowl. That pattern is repeated while you work your way up and down the line of bowls.  Unlike 1, 2, 3 where it doesn't matter what the animal is doing, Super Bowls requires active engagement from your pet. They control when they move ahead by choosing when to look up at you.  I liked the idea of this game because I wanted to give Otto a way of choosing when he would go into and out of the crate. I also wanted a fun way to practice moving between perches because he had a tendency to get too comfortable in one spot and refuse to move. Bowls wouldn't work well in the mew, so I established an order of perches that we woul...

I always hope for a timely response to cues during training sessions. When I ask Aldo to step on my glove, a behavior that he knows well, I want him to step up right away. If he doesn't, I know that he's not interested or distracted by something. For new behaviors, I'll give the birds more time to figure out what I'm asking them to do. I've found that Otto needs plenty of this "processing time." When I ask Otto to go in his crate, he has to think about it first. I know he's not ignoring me or saying "no" because he is still engaged. He needs to evaluate the distractions outside, check if there are any tidbits remaining at his feet, loosen up his foot if he thinks he has a piece of food, and figure out what I'm waiting for him to do. Once everything checks out, he's ready to hop in the crate.  The good news is that with practice, Otto's processing time is decreasing. Sometimes he walks into the crate right away, eager for more tid...

Glove training wasn't working. Otto the Great Horned Owl was telling me repeatedly, "no thanks." So I had a decision to make. Would I continue training on the glove? I still had a hundred and one ways to change up my approach to see what would work for Otto. Or would I shift gears to try something new? I felt like I needed a break from the glove (and I'm sure Otto did, too), so I decided on a gear shift. After wiping off a layer of dust from the plastic, I hauled the bottom half of Otto's crate into his mew. Our new goal: crate training. If Otto could walk into his crate, in theory I could carry the crate into the classroom and he could walk out onto a perch during a program. He wouldn't need to sit on my glove at all! I was determined to set up Otto for success, so we started small in our first session. Would he enter the bottom half of his crate for a piece of food? I set a chunk of rat inside and he practically ran in to get it. Success! Now would he stay t...

As a young animal trainer, I learned that "ABC" is all you need to know. The environment, or Antecedent , leads to a Behavior to get a certain Consequence . Simply by changing the antecedent or consequence, you can change behavior. That was always in my mind as I worked on glove training with Otto the Great Horned Owl. But I kept getting frustrated. It was like we were not speaking the same language. It felt more like I was coercing him to do something rather than teaching him to do it. I knew Otto was frustrated, too. I started thinking there must be another way to approach this, so I put out my feelers into the world of pet animal training. I learned about pattern games from a cat behavior consultant a few months ago. I was intrigued and ordered the book that started the pattern game trend. Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog  by Leslie McDevitt arrived in my mailbox and I cracked it open to the first chapter, wondering if there would be anything useful ...

Last week I wrote about taking a big leap with Otto the Great Horned Owl. We stepped out the door! While it was a huge accomplishment, we still have plenty of work to do in this arena. Otto wasn't exactly happy with the new arrangement. Stepping outside was scary for him. Now we need to work to make the Museum backyard a positive place. In our next training session, I didn't even ask him to step on glove. I asked him to go to the scale, hop to a perch, fly back to his hutch. Easy, fun stuff is important to give him a break from serious training. If every session was really difficult and near his limit, he may not want to participate any more.  Then I started thinking: how could I acclimate Otto to the world outside the door without going through the door every time? What if we tried the Engage/Disengage game?  This pattern game was popularized by dog trainers that work with fearful or reactive dogs, but I actually learned about it from a cat behavior consultant. The idea is t...

I am lucky to have two fantastic mentors at the moment. One specializes in cat behavior, while the other is a raptor-savvy trainer. They have both given me advice recently that, though different in context, was surprisingly similar. Essentially they said that you're never going to feel 100% ready for the next step; at some point, you just have to make the leap. When I set a goal date of stepping out the mew door with Otto the Great Horned Owl on my glove in two weeks, it sounded impossible. But I figured if my raptor mentor had confidence in us, I should have a little confidence, too.  I stepped into the mew on our goal date, forcing myself to act as if this session would be no big deal. I didn't want Otto to sense my nerves. I didn't feel quite ready to make a big move, but I knew I had to cross a mental threshold before we could get past the physical one. I could hear my mentors in my head saying, go for it ! And we did! We walked out the door!  I wish we had a better pho...