We now know that there are four owlets this year. I’m told this is well beyond the two-baby norm for Great Horned Owls, but the Broomfield owl pair are experienced parents who also have a good food source nearby: a colony of prairie dogs out at the Rocky Mountain Metropolitain Airport.
The two above are checking out an empty engineering office in BRM05. Sorry, kids – it’s already been promised to somebody as part of the Broomfield re-stack.
Owls have been nesting on the Broomfield campus for some time, and every year (so I’m told) they have babies.
I guess it was past bedtime for baby owls.
The BRM courtyard is a protected area that attracts wildlife; I’ve seen rabbits in here as well.
So I’ve returned to live (and work) in the USA. A number of people, particularly US immigration officers, have said: “Welcome home.” I am grateful for their friendly intentions, but “home” is not what the US represents for me. I’ve lived here only about a third of my life to date.
Having spent many of my formative years in Asia, I tried to come “home” to America once before, when I graduated from high school in India and entered college in the US. Like many third culture kids, I had felt out of place (though not unhappy) in the exotic countries I’d lived in, where I was very obviously foreign even after being there for years. I dreamed of returning to a country where I would feel wholly at ease and be accepted as a natural part of the scenery. It was a rude shock to discover that this homeland, for me and others like me, is a myth. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was a “hidden immigrant”: on the surface seemingly a local, but in reality a not-quite-native, which manifested in ways which confused and irritated the real Americans.
Continue reading Coming “Home” to AmericaToday the owls are sitting on a window ledge outside an office in BRM05. Apparently they aspire to careers in engineering. Or else, as a colleague said, they’re keeping an eye on the mouse…
Yesterday we had the perfect snow: it fell very prettily for hours, coating everything in white – except the roads. But I didn’t know it wouldn’t stick to the roads, so I went home early (I don’t know very well how to drive in snow yet, and try to avoid it) and participated in a phone conference from there.
WFH (working from home) will be much easier after I get an Internet connection installed next week. I can’t use my housemate’s; she uses it for her own Sun OpenWork. OpenWork was mentioned in the Economist this week, as part of a special section on The Mobile Workforce, with several quotes from Jonathan. Recommended reading.
