Q&A with Carl Safina

 

 

 

Carl Safina is the author of the book Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe. His other books include Beyond Words. He is a Stony Brook University endowed professor and he lives in East Setauket, New York. 

 

Q: Why did you decide to write this book about your connection with Alfie, a screech owl you raised?

 

A: To share something I thought was an unusual and beautiful experience and explore the deeper questions it prompted—why it surprised me that an owl had relational capabilities.

 

Q: Why did it surprise you?

 

A: In our culture we are taught that animals are all interchangeable marbles, that they don’t know what they’re doing. Of all the people I know, I should have been the least vulnerable to that, given that I am interacting with animals.

 

Some of us are familiar with the idea of imprinting—an animal raised by someone who is not of their species. An owl who fit all those hazards responded normally to a wild courting mate, raised babies in a normal way—yet still recognized us as individuals, recognized our dogs as individuals, was afraid of strange dogs—it showed she knows who she is [and what her relationships are].

 

Q: What do you think are some of the most common perceptions and misconceptions about owls?

 

A: They certainly have a lot more baggage than almost any other wild creature. Many cultures have a perception that owls mean something from good luck to a sign of impending doom.

 

Q: Did you have any preconceptions going into this project?

 

A: I thought we were going to try to raise a baby bird and do a soft release as soon as she wanted to fly, and have three weeks of her flying around our yard and then she would disperse. I knew I’d enjoy that, providing she survived the near-death experience that brought her to us.

 

I was not expecting a long-term relationship. She would have left our yard, and she did for about a week, but our yard was not occupied by wild screech owls. She was raised into an opening. Most owls fledge out into an area occupied by their parents and can’t stay there. There’s some evidence the parents drive them out.

 

Q: How is Alfie doing now?

 

A: Pretty perfectly. We see her every night. She remains thoroughly unafraid of us. If she hears us let the dogs out, we call back and forth. It’s magical.

 

Q: Do you have any bond with her babies?

 

A: The situation is not inducive to her young ones interacting with us. We never attempted to interact with them.

 

Q: Have any of them come back?

 

A: No, they’re not supposed to. One year Alfie had no mate, he must have died, and one night that year I saw her in a tree with another screech owl, at least a year old but acting like a young one. It possibly was one of hers.

 

Q: What impact did the pandemic have on your relationship?

 

A: It normally should have been a year with a lot of traveling. If conditions had not kept us home, there would be no story about Alfie, just that we raised her.

 

The fact that we were stuck at home let me watch Alfie and her mate and her family for five hours every day. It’s why the relationship and the story got to be what they were. I love the magical touch of that timing. It was a beautiful thing I was able to do during a miserable year.

 

It was a horrible time, yet I could step out the back door and realize that for most of the world, Covid was beside the point. They were just doing their ancient things around us.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: That we enormously underestimate the wild lives around us, what it means for them to be alive, how vivid their lives are, how they know who they are, how our opinion of them is a culturally ingrained myth. We are outliers in our extreme disrespect for living things. Other cultures assumed some of that, that they have their own lives, thoughts, and feelings.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m trying to figure that out. I had thought it would be a quick book on amazing things animals do; I’ve been collecting files on things like social organization and play behavior.

 

I thought I would pull it out and do a quick book, but it raised questions about where in life is the simplest life that’s sentient? I learned there’s no such thing as simple life. Even a bacterial cell is mind-boggling in its complexity. I’m trying to come up with a book about sentience.

 

Q: Is there anything else we should know?

A: There’s a children’s version of Alfie & Me out now. It’s been fun to go to talks and book signings and have a version of the story for all ages. A lot of adults like the children’s version.

 

Alfie had a new mate in 2023 and 2024. I haven’t seen him since October—I’m hoping he’s going to come back at the end of February.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Carl Safina.