Well-meaning folks add no end of comic relief to owl studies, but others express greed and control, two human characteristics that cause life so much grief. One person had a screech-owl nest box that attracted a nesting pair. It didn't open, so we could monitor events, but he allowed us to substitute our box. The owls accepted it. Then he thought if one pair of owls was nice, more would be better, so he put eight more boxes in his one hundred by one hundred-foot backyard. But one pair of screech owls defends several cavities, as we'd told him earlier, so, of course, he never had more than a single nesting pair.

Saddest of all is separation from nature so complete that the separatists are oblivious. They don't or perhaps can't acknowledge a natural situation. Another family had a large dead oak that they decided to cut down in May in the midst of the nesting season. As the chain saw started, an onlooker saw a bird fly out of a hole in the tree (later believed to be a screech owl). The downed oak was loaded onto a pickup truck, taken to the city dump, and when tossed out, some "small, white, fuzzy, baby birds" rolled out with it, according to my informant. She didn't know if anyone did anything with the owlets or just left them -- dumped!