On Valentine s Day 1985, biologist Stacey O Brien adopted Wesley, a baby barn owl with an injured wing who could not have survived in the wild. Over the next nineteen years, O Brien studied Wesley s strange habits with both a tender heart and a scientist s eye and provided a mice-only diet that required her to buy the rodents in bulk (28,000 over the owl s lifetime). She watched him turn from a helpless fluff ball into an avid communicator with whom she developed a language all their own. Eventually he became a gorgeous, gold-and-white macho adult with a heart-shaped face who preened in the mirror and objected to visits by any other males to his house. O Brien also brings us inside Caltech s prestigious research community, a kind of scientific Hogwarts where resident owls sometimes flew freely from office to office and eccentric, brilliant scientists were extraordinarily committed to studying and helping animals; all of them were changed by the animals they loved. As O Brien gets close to Wesley, she makes astonishing discoveries about owl behavior, intelligence, and communication, coining the term The Way of the Owl to describe his noble behavior. When O Brien develops her own life-threatening illness, the biologist who saved the life of a helpless baby bird is herself rescued from death by the insistent love and courage of this wild animal.
Enhanced by wonderful photographs, "Wesley the Owl" is a thoroughly engaging, heartwarming, often funny story of a complex, emotional, non-human being capable of reason, play, and, most important, love and loyalty. Translated into eight languages and named an "Audubon Magazine" Editor s Choice, "Wesley the Owl" is sure to be cherished by animal lovers everywhere."