There’s only one Halloween party we want to attend this year, and it’s right here in the Eagle Valley Raptor Center, next to Oakley the great horned owl chick.
After taking the orphaned chick in, the centre’s program director, Ken Lockwood, decided Oakley was still too young to be placed with the three older juvenile owls in his care, so he gave the young owl a surrogate to help him acclimate to his own kind. “Sometimes we give them a little puppet, and this gives them a sense of security and something to snuggle up to when they’re by themselves,” Lockwood says.
And while the googly-eyed animatronic owl next to Oakley is a far cry from the real thing, Oakley doesn’t look perturbed. In fact, he seems to be enjoying himself, dancing and screeching along with Bobby Pickett’s “Monster Mash.”
Oakley was eventually returned to the wild, but like Pickett, he left us with a hit that’s bound to give even the sternest Halloween grinch a ghoulishly good time.
