Wesley the Owl

The 2009 nonfiction work Wesley the Owl is biologist Stacey O’Brien’s memoir about the twenty years she spent raising and living with a barn owl. The book explores many different facets of this human and pet relationship. As an owl researcher at Caltech, O’Brien was able to study Wesley in-depth and get insights into heretofore-unknown owl behaviors. As someone living with an owl for its lifetime, she shares the emotional and psychological effects of this kind of bond. At the same time, she also provides readers with general information about owl biology and research. Although Wesley the Owl is written in a primarily funny, factual, and down to earth style, O’Brien does at times refer to her spiritual, religious, and supernatural beliefs to explain her relationship with Wesley.

On Valentine’s Day in 1985, Stacey O’Brien was working as an assistant in the Caltech owl rehab and research laboratory. A researcher showed her a four day old barn owl that could neither be released back into the wild after rehab nor placed with a zoo or other research center because the baby owl had sustained permanent nerve damage in its wing that meant it would never be able to fly – which in turn would mean that it couldn’t survive on its own. O’Brien says that it was love at first sight, and she immediately decided to give this owlet a home with her. At first, she assumed that this would simply mean she would have unprecedented access to studying a developing owl. But, over the next twenty years, the two forged a bonded and deeply meaningful relationship.

She named the owl Wesley and spent the first few months with him sleeping next to her pillow with her hand draped over him, since a mother owl would always be in bodily contact with its young. In some ways, Wesley was a regular owl, although his development was much slower than that of owlets in the wild – probably because he didn’t have a mother owl to teach him how to do things. In other ways, the owlet would always be different. For instance, he learned to walk instead of flying, since his wing could never bear his weight for longer than a few seconds.



In her book, O’Brien describes Wesley’s personality and character slowly emerging as he matures and as the two grow into each other. She studied him in some ways like a scientist, documenting his habits, behaviors, and learning processes. She is matter-of-fact, for example, in describing feeding Wesley six mice a day (mice are the only things barn owls eat). In other ways, she related to him like a parent or close friend, photographing every achievement proudly (many of these photographs are reproduced in the book), and enduring his attempts to feed her mice or build her nests. In fact, she writes that she had to pretend to eat at least one mouse a day so that Wesley wouldn’t become alarmed about her well being. Sometimes these two sides of the relationship ran together: for example, once Wesley became an adult owl, he chose her as his mate, which allowed O’Brien to make recordings of barn owl mating calls with more precision and accuracy than had ever before been achieved.

What becomes clear to readers is that by adopting Wesley, the author went all-in, making the decision to forgo – or least postpone for a long time – things like having a partner or a family. Instead, she fueled the kind of energy those things would have taken into her bond with this owl. In turn, Wesley grew extremely protective and loyal, chasing away any would-be boyfriends and often providing a comforting presence.

When O’Brien isn’t writing about her life with Wesley directly, she branches out into both the science of birds and the scientists who study birds.



Part of the book describes her work at Caltech. Her humorously warm portraits of the brilliant researchers and scientists who worked in the lab and who were each enormously dedicated to studying, helping, and ensuring a future for animals are described by readers as unforgettable. The passion and commitment of these people rise above the ways in which they do not fit the typical mold, and their difficult work is truly making a difference in the world.

Wesley the Owl also gives us information about owls, and other birds, in general, in both biological and historical terms. For example, owls have non-symmetrically placed ears, which enable them to triangulate sounds in such a way that they can hunt mice by heartbeat even under several feet of snow. The reason owls live in tree hollows is because their feathers aren’t waterproof, like those of most birds. Also, owls are curious, intelligent, and playful. One owl at the laboratory frequently invented games for itself, such as throwing a pencil off a desk for himself over and over again in order to fly up, twist in the air, and catch it in a satisfying way.

The book takes a dramatically sad turn when O’Brien discovered that her lifelong untreated migraines had escalated into a benign, but inoperable brain tumor that made her experience constant pain and frequent blackouts. Forced to move in with her mom, she contemplated taking her own life in order to stop suffering from this ordeal. The only thing that prevented her from carrying out this drastic action is the knowledge that she would have no way to explain her decision to Wesley, who would be abandoned at the end of his life. Happily, through a combination of different medicines and therapies, she eventually found a way to manage her pain to a more acceptable level.



Wesley lived nineteen years, which is an incredibly long life for a barn owl. He eventually grew blind, and then finally died in his human’s arms. O’Brien dubs the wit and wisdom of what she learned from him as “The Way of the Owl” – summarized as no tolerance for lies, no breaking promises, and always unconditional love.

Wesley the Owl has been praised by ornithologists such as Kenn Kaufman, who writes, “Stacey O'Brien got to know this owl with a unique combination of deep scientific understanding and rare emotional intensity, and the result is stunning, unforgettable. Read this book and you will never see owls, or humans, in the same light again.” Also, quite recently, The Jim Henson Company acquired the rights to this memoir.