Alfie and Me
What Owls Know, What Humans Believe
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
A Scientific American Best Staff Read of 2023
“Irresistible.” —People
A moving account of raising, then freeing, an orphaned screech owl, whose lasting friendship with the author illuminates humanity’s relationship with the world.
When ecologist Carl Safina and his wife, Patricia, took in a near-death baby owl, they expected that, like other wild orphans they’d rescued, she’d be a temporary presence. But Alfie’s feathers were not growing correctly, requiring prolonged care. As Alfie grew and gained strength, she became a part of the family, joining a menagerie of dogs and chickens and making a home for herself in the backyard. Carl and Patricia began to realize that the healing was mutual; Alfie had been braided into their world, and was now pulling them into hers.
Alfie & Me is the story of the remarkable impact this little owl would have on their lives. The continuing bond of trust following her freedom—and her raising of her own wild brood—coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a year in which Carl and Patricia were forced to spend time at home without the normal obligations of work and travel. Witnessing all the fine details of their feathered friend’s life offered Carl and Patricia a view of existence from Alfie’s perspective.
One can travel the world and go nowhere; one can be stuck keeping the faith at home and discover a new world. Safina’s relationship with an owl made him want to better understand how people have viewed humanity’s relationship with nature across cultures and throughout history. Interwoven with Safina’s keen observations, insight, and reflections, Alfie & Me is a work of profound beauties and magical timing harbored within one upended year.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Stony Brook University ecology professor Safina (Becoming Wild) shares the moving story of how he and his wife, Patricia, rescued and rehabilitated an orphaned eastern screech owl they named Alfie. Safina, a licensed wildlife rehabilitator, took in the bird in 2018 after receiving a tip about a baby owl that had fallen out of its nest. Nursing Alfie back to health, the Safinas let her roam freely about their house and gradually acclimated her to the outdoors, keeping the owlet first in a chicken coop and then leaving the coop door open so she could come and go as she pleased. Safina continued providing Alfie meals until she learned to hunt on her own, and she eventually found a mate, dubbed Plus-One, with whom she raised a brood. Philosophical musings on humanity's beliefs about nature add intellectual rigor to the heartwarming story; Safina laments how Plato's view of the spiritual world as distinct from and superior to the material world led Western society to devalue nature, a perspective Safina contrasts critically with Native American cultures that believe animals are "thinking and emotional beings who have minds, communicate among themselves, act with agency on their own behalf." Stirring and ruminative, this is an excellent complement to Irene Pepperberg's Alex and Me.
