This Owl Box thing is really getting out of hand, and I'm wondering why. Loyal and attentive readers may remember that last week I wrote about Molly, a mother owl in San Marcos with her four healthy chicks and one apparently healthy egg. That is still the situation as I write this.
Well, Molly has hit the big time, or at least the big time for owls. One reader wrote to tell me that there is a bar near San Marcos in which, during daylight hours, all the television sets are tuned to owl cam. I could not confirm that data, but I do like the idea of daytime drinkers debating which chick can currently be seen poking his/her head from under Mommy's butt.
That's one of the major events going on in the Owl Box. There's also a lot of pecking and rummaging. At evening time, McGee, the male owl, comes swooping in with some delightfully eviscerated rodents, and I imagine drinks are on the house during that bloody yet cuddly display.
But it's not like Molly is the only bird with her own cam. She's not even the only owl. The Hungry Owl Project, which is part of the WildCare hospital in San Rafael, has an up-and-running Barnowl Cam, with up and squirming chicks. Alas, it is not streaming video, but it's still pretty good:
www.hungryowl.org/barnowlcam.html.
And there are eagles and hawks and hummingbirds, all with their own cams, many of them with eggs because 'tis the season, and all of them cute in their own bird-like ways. So why Molly? Is this one of those "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" deals, where citizens get all involved in something - in this case, a relatively benign something - while other apparently equally appealing things never get off the ground.
I'm thinking about Ponzi schemes. Now, the basic idea behind a Ponzi scheme is not hard to grasp; I'm sure almost any larcenous human being could work out the mechanics. So why do some Ponzi schemes succeed spectacularly (until they fail - failure is built into Ponzi schemes) and others never get off the ground. Is it skill of presentation or timing or what? Was Bernie Madoff that much smarter than all the other crooks?
Why is this owl different from all other owls?
I think the same thing about pop musicians too. Obviously there are a few wonderfully talented or quirky or whatever singers, and their success is not a mystery. (Although not all amazingly talented pop musicians make the big time; they become "cult favorites," which is a term of art meaning "marginally employed.") But then there's the great seething mass of people trying to become pop stars, and a few of them do and most of them don't and the difference between the first group and the second is not perceptible.
Even a gigantic star-making entity like "American Idol" can't make pop stars, not with all the money and the exposure in the world. Of the winners, only Carrie Underwood is an honest to god star, and she's really a country singer who won a pop contest. (Jennifer Hudson, I should remind you, did not win "American Idol," which makes my point very well.) So if you can't create a pop star with all the money and power in the world, and you can't get a Ponzi scheme going unless the stars are aligned, and you can't make your comedy video go viral no matter how much you plug it - what are we to think of the owl?
Popular culture is less predictable than you might think. I know there are singers and strippers and comedians out there who decided to take the low road, because crude always sells, but the interesting thing is that crude does not always sell - although sometimes, you bet - and those people did not make it. You do not know who they are.
And yet, an owl gets 4 million unique viewers and counting. Very few cable television programs get 4 million viewers; maybe they should have thought of putting an owl in the picture.
Maybe reality, provided it's real reality and not "reality" in the entertainment sense, is just riveting. Confession: I have an Owl Box window open on my computer even as I am typing this. The fifth egg has yet to hatch, and it's not clear whether the new owl will live. Plus Carlos, owner of the Owl Box and latest Internet sensation, is answering questions from schoolchildren. So cute.
Owls are all the rage these days - or at least one owl is. Does that not strike you as curious?
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Molly cam
