Funny Face

“What you call funny, I call interesting.” Dick Avery says to Jo in “Funny Face.”

In 1957 a musical called “Funny Face” was released starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. It was about an awkwardly beautiful, shy, bookish woman (Hepburn) who worked at a bookstore and whose beauty is discovered by a fashion photographer (Astaire). He brings her to Paris and her life is transformed into a top Paris fashion model. She hopes to meet her intellectual idol, but instead falls in love with the photographer.

It is said this Great Horned Owl mom-and-dad couple are the most photographed owls of the midwest. Every early spring the park is flooded with photographers with their 3 foot-long lensed cameras positioned on a stationary tripod, pointed at the nest, hoping for a glimpse of the chicks. A single quick press of a button sets off a succession of continuous clicks and snaps producing the type of sound one might mistake for a Hollywood red carpet event instead of a nature preserve.

I tried to come up with a clever take on “paparazzi” to name the spectacle. Owl-arazzi. Papa-owl-zi. Nothing was catchy or easily rolled off the tongue.

You could clump me in with the crowd of them, but I like to consider myself different. After all, I was the one who discovered the nest in the first place when the owl-paparazzi (?) were searching the other side of the park for it.

At the time I was just someone who appreciated owls, but didn’t get the obsession. And anyway I was on a mission to walk 16,000 steps every day inspite of the sub-zero temps.

For days I walked the empty park after dusk while the owls’ “hoots” and calls to each other were so loud and close to my ears, that I swear their vocalizations vibrated the ground, reverberated through my body, and settled in my heart.

Not only did I find the nest first, but before I found it I accidentally (and embarrassingly) caught the owls mate in the freezing, damp January temps without another (human) soul around . So I feel a kinship with them- particularly the babies.

I know what you’re wondering: does this make me their godmother?

I feel strongly that it does.