Great horned owls invade Los Feliz for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving in Los Feliz

I always look forward to major holidays in Los Angeles because it gets quiet! Even the freeways. All the roads. The quietest time of any week is Sunday evening, but holidays are blanketed as if we had the snow we never get.

Yesterday, Thanksgiving, was that quiet. So quiet, that some of the wildlife got overexcited. Did those people LEAVE finally? It was only 6 PM, just an hour after sunset, when I heard two Great Horned Owls singing a duet outside my window!

This is NOT a great horned owl! It’s a Snowy Owl from Zurich, from Tambako the Jaguar. He’s at Flickr, and this is from Creative Commons. This is the BEST place to get photos by permission, instead of using Google images, which STEALS images all the time.

If you hear an owl anywhere in northeast LA, there’s a 99% chance it’s a Great Horned Owl. You probably won’t be able to see it, but the call is distinctive – WHO (pause) who who – so that once you’ve heard it you’ll remember it. The rhythm is compelling, and I feel that before the sound, like a jungle drum beating in Silver Lake.

When I lived on Vermont, just a block down from Griffith Park, I heard them all the time. In Silver Lake, a mile away, not so much, but a few times a year. So it was funny to hear them on Thanksgiving so early!

Of course then a rowdy family, 20 or 30 people, came down the street and they were gone. But later on, I heard them (the owls, not the people) near the 7-11 on Hyperion. They were having a great time, exploring new places in the hood.

Thanksgiving for vegetarians

In other bird news , I skipped turkey this year, and had a nice plate of salmon instead. I just don’t feel right anymore, celebrating a holiday where an obscenely obese bird is lying dead on the table, and is supposed to represent something good.

The Times had a good article here:

Not only do animal welfare activists abhor the killing of the birds, they take offense at the traditional ritual of making fun of the bird, even the presidential pardoning of the turkey on the grounds of the White House — “as if the turkey had committed some crime,” scoffed one.

Get this:

The federal Humane Slaughter Act, which governs how animals are killed, does not protect poultry — which constitute 95% of animals killed for food.

“People are shocked when they find out that chickens and turkeys are exempt from the humane laws,” said Dawn, whose recent book, “Thanking the Monkey — Rethinking the Way We Treat Animals,” touches on the gruesome details of slaughter.

I’m not a vegetarian, or a vegan, but this just makes sense to me.

More resources for owls

I did a popular cartoon for Slate about a Tofu Thanksgiving. Below are some 3-D pictures of owls, and the only Great Horned Owl Bird Guide on Amazon about Great Horned Owls! (Disclosure: I get a few cents, only if you buy something from Amazon.)