Eight Famous Owl Brand Names

People have been using owl brand names since at least the 19th century and probably a lot earlier.

The oldest firm in England named after a bird still doing business is Ye Olde Fighting Cock in St. Albans, Hertfordshire. The pub was established in 793 AD, according to its website, though its license dates only to the 17th century. At any rate, the Guinness Book of World Records agrees it’s the oldest pub in the UK.

In the U.S., the oldest product named for an owl that I can find is Kentucky Owl Bourbon, founded 1879, according to the family that still owns and sells it. More companies than ever are naming their firms after owls, according to InspirationFeed.com, which provides logo designs and websites to start-ups. The archives of LogoLounge.com contain over 250,000 logos and it says searches for owl logos on its website have spiked over 200% in the last two years.

Do you need a positive, non-controversial brand name? Do you want people to think your business is smart, your employees are patient and your mission is in tune with nature? It might be a wise move to use an owl brand name for your business. Or adopt an owl as your mascot.

Here are eight historic, interesting or colorful companies with “owl” (or, in the case of Hooters, its slang equivalent) in their name:

1. Kentucky Owl Bourbon

was founded in Oregon, Kentucky in 1879 by Charles Mortimer Dedman. Prior to the enactment of Prohibition, teetotalers were already on the move in Kentucky and in 1916 government agents confiscated Dedman’s entire stock and hauled it away to a warehouse in Frankfurt. Not long after that, over 250,000 gallons of Dedman’s whiskey were supposedly consumed in a fire that burned surprisingly cool for being fueled by alcohol. Rumor has it the finest speakeasies in the nation were pouring Kentucky Owl Bourbon throughout Prohibition. Whoever spirited the Kentucky Owl Bourbon away never compensated C. M. Dedman.

original kentuckyowl label - Eight Famous Owl Brand Names
Original Kentucky Owl Bourbon Label

Fast forward almost 100 years when Dedman’s descendants, who operate the Old Owl Tavern and Owl’s Nest Lounge at the Beaumont Inn in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, decided to resurrect Kentucky Owl Bourbon. Today Kentucky Owl Bourbon is made in very small batches and can only be purchased in the Bluegrass state, where it sells for $175 per bottle and more. You can get a pour at the Old Owl Tavern and Owl’s Nest Lounge for just $40, a real bargain compared to the Brown Hotel in Louisville, where you’ll pay $110.

Tasting Notes for Kentucky Owl Bourbon, Batch 6, released September 2016, according to The Whiskey Wash: Deep amber color, many narrow, evenly spaced legs. Nose is highly vaporous, so a good nose rest is suggested before nosing. You taste caramel and fruit on the palate followed by prominent oak at the mid-palate. Juicy Fruit gum and toasted marshmallow flavors emerge if you let it linger.

2. White Owl Cigars

was founded in Dotham, Alabama in 1887. These inexpensive cigars, which retail at 2 for $0.99, are still manufactured there. The logo of the snowy owl perched on a cigar is one of the oldest commercial logos. The very first commercial logo, the Bass Ale red triangle, was trademarked in 1870. (You can find the Bass Ale mark in the lower right corner of Edouard Manet’s famous 1882 painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergere.)

256px New Kensington Pennsylvania 8482187183 - Eight Famous Owl Brand Names
By Doug Kerr via Wikimedia Commons

White Owl cigars come in a variety of types and flavors, such as Strawberry Blunts, Grape Cigarillos, New Yorkers, Invincibles and Demi Tips.

John Travolta has said that some of his fondest memories growing up in New Jersey are of his father smoking White Owls. These days Travolta “can afford to reward himself with less pedestrian smokes” such as Davidoffs, Dunhills and Montecristos, according to Cigar Aficionado: The Good Life Magazine for Men

In the movie “Blast from the Past,” Christopher Walken’s character hands down his prized baseball card collection to his son, played by Brendan Fraser, in a White Owl cigar box.

The Swedish tobacco and snuff company Swedish Match now owns White Owl Cigars. Its vision, according to its website, is “a world without cigarettes.” Does that include cigars and cigarillos?

3. The Owl Drug Company,

founded in San Francisco in 1892, is legendary among apothecary bottle collectors. Not only did they sell drugs and related products, they also manufactured bottles to store pills, sodas, poisons and powdered medicines.
Owl Drug Company logo 1917 Douglas Arizona - Eight Famous Owl Brand Names
Foreshadowing Starbucks, they also made drinking glasses personalized for some of the many locations where they had stores, such as San Bernardino, Kansas City, New York and of course San Francisco. According to a 128-page collector’s book published in 1968 about Owl Drug glassware, most of the items manufactured included the characteristic Owl Drug “logo embossed on into the glass — an owl sitting on a mortar and pestle with T.O.D. Co on the mortar.”

Western actor Richard Edmund “Hoot” Gibson, the idol of millions of kids in the 20s and 30s, got his nickname “Hoot” when he was 15 delivering prescriptions for the Owl Drug Store in Los Angeles.

For many years in the first part of the 20th century, one of the 19 Owl Drug Store locations in San Francisco was in the Flood Building at the corner of Powell and Market. In the 1947 film noir movie “Dark Passage,” Humphrey Bogart’s character rides a cable car, getting off at Powell and Market in front of the Owl Drug Store, the terminus of that line. You can see a still of this scene at the website Reel SF, “San Francisco movie locations from classic films.”

Owl Drug Stores was purchased by Rexall Drugs in the 1920s. It continued to use the Owl Drug Store brand until the end of the 20th century. There is still at least one Owl Rexall Pharmacy, in Covina, California.

4. Red Owl

was an upper Midwest grocery store chain founded in 1922. Before it was sold to Supervalu in 1998, the company owned 441 stores in North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan. After the sale, a few of the stores became independent and retained the Red Owl name.
RedOwlRefrigeratorMagnet - Eight Famous Owl Brand Names
Mary on The Mary Tyler Moore Show shopped at a Red Owl in Minneapolis in the 70s. In this screenshot posted at tumbler, you can see her picking a package off the rack in the meat department during the opening credits of season 4. Look for the red owl logo on a poster in the upper right corner.

The only remaining Red Owl store still in operation appears to be Mason Brothers Red Owl in Green Bay, Wisconsin, “Where convenience is King.”

After Brownlow’s Red Owl in Le Roy, Minnesota closed in 2009, it made its Red Owl memorabilia collection available for view to the public. However, according to its Facebook page, the collection was put up for sale on eBay starting February 2016. Prefaced by a tearful emoji, Kay McCloud, the current owner, posted this for his
Facebook fans on July 2, 2015, at 9:59 pm
:

“It is a Walmart world now. No room left for small businesses. We were in business 80 years. I have the largest Red Owl collection in the country including many signs and 2500 items! If u want a shirt send me your size and address I will send you one for free. Always love a Red owl lover; the shirts are from when the store was opened.”

The Coen brothers used items from the Brownlow memorabilia collection in their 2009 film, “A Serious Man.” In the film, an orthodontist named Sussman discovers Hebrew letters engraved on the lower incisors of a patient’s teeth. They say, “Help me. Save me.” In one of several efforts to discern their deeper meaning, he translates the numerical equivalents of the letters into a phone number. The phone number belongs to a Red Owl store in Bloomington, Minnesota. He drives to the store, but it’s just a Red Owl. “Just groceries, what have you.”

The Coen brothers like Red Owls stores. The first episode of Season 3 of their television series “Fargo” released in 2017 includes a scene in a small Red Owl grocery, presumably using props again from the Brownlow collection.

5. Hooters

opened its first location in Clearwater, FL, in 1983. If you’ve never been to a Hooters, let me explain. Although the owl in the logo resembles a Horned Owl and hooter is slang for owl, the name is not a tribute to Strigidae Bubo. Hooters is also slang for something else. The logo owl’s creepy little eyes resembling nipples should be a tip off. According to the bloggers over at Straight Dope, the bulbous hoot-sounding squeeze-horns on old time cars and bicycles resemble breasts, hence they’re hooters.

ThinkstockPhotos 678689860 300x264 - Eight Famous Owl Brand Names
Another kind of hooter

Hooters opened the original “breastaurants.” Their success, with over 400 restaurants in 27 countries around the world, has led to many imitators, including the Tilted Kilt, Twin Peaks, Mugs & Jugs, Racks and Bone Daddy’s. The possibilities for double entendre names are unlimited if you’re blessed with a lewd imagination.

Hooters admits that though it’s a sports bar with burgers, salads, sandwiches, seafood and “Hooter original chicken wings,” its main attraction is the Hooter Girls. With their short-shorts and tank tops, they “provide the energy, charisma and engaging conversation that keep guests coming back,” says their website.

Of course, I only go there for the food.

6. Owl City

is an American band created in 2007 by singer, songwriter and instrumentalist Adam Young. I’m mentioning this owl-named band right after Hooter’s because it’s another example of naming an entity after an owl for reasons that would seem to have nothing to do with owls. This owl brand name is derived from the name of Adam Young’s hometown, Owatonna, Minnesota.

Owl City at Anaheim House of Blues 1 - Eight Famous Owl Brand Names
Owl City at Anaheim House of Blues

However, if there was synchronicity involved in naming the band, it was revealed when in 2010, Owl City recorded Adam Young’s song “To the Sky,” for the film “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole.” The song perfectly evokes the sense of freedom and joy we vicariously experience watching owls take flight.

Bid the forest floor goodbye as you race the wind
And take to the sky (you take to the sky)
There’s a realm above the trees
Where the lost are finally found
Touch your feathers to the breeze
And leave the ground

Complete Lyrics
Video

7. The Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab)

was created in 1994 to “bring the Purdue Writing Lab to students no matter where they were.” It is the “world’s first Online Writing Lab.”

It is also the only OWL acronym with enough cache to appear on the first page of search engine rankings. Which is understandable considering their website gets over 500 million visits a year. When I enter the search term “owl” in Google or Bing, the top entry says “Welcome to the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL).” OWL’s Alexa ranking is 1510, which means that only 1509 websites in the entire world get more traffic.

BarredOwl ThinkstockPhotos 457088173 200x300 - Eight Famous Owl Brand Names
Barred Owls are the most commonly found owls in Indiana

It’s kind of a shame that an acronym that makes absolutely no reference to any kind of actual owl gets the catbird seat for owl SERP rankings.

I also wish they’d change their one-eyed owl logo. It looks like they just hacked off a piece of the Hooters Owl and stuck letters into it. At least give the poor thing a full set of eyeballs.

The OWL might want to consider adopting a real owl as its representative. The website Wild Indiana, “Everything Hoosier Outdoors,” says Barred Owls are the most commonly found owls in Indiana, though it names seven other owls often seen in the state.

8. Origami Owl

had me stumped for a long time. The company neither sells nor instructs people in the art of origami. Nor, as you might infer from having a look at their product line, does it specialize in jewelry resembling owls. The firm was started by Bella Weems when she was 14 years old. The Chandler, Arizona high school sophomore wanted to buy a car when she turned 16. She asked her parents for the money. They said earn it. So she did. In 2010 she started her own custom jewelry company. By 2013 it was generating $250 million in sales.

The company has about 60,000 independent associates who buy jewelry and related products at a discount, which they sell at private parties or “jewelry bars” in people’s homes. The business uses a multi-level marketing (MLM) model, similar to Amway, Shaklee and Avon.
It’s an amazing success story about a very enterprising teen.

But why the name Origami Owl? Bella’s first products were lockets with a variety of charms people could select from to make their own distinctive jewelry. Was an owl one of them? Maybe but I really didn’t find any owl pendants in the collections I saw online. It seems Bella has always loved the origami hanging from the ceiling of her bedroom. Because people can fold origami in unique ways, the word conveys the individuality people bring to designing their own versions of the lockets the company sells. “That’s the signature of Origami Owl jewelry. No two are exactly alike,” she says.

What about the owl part? “Owls represent wisdom, strength, and courage.” Bella says she and her mom, Chrissy Weems, put the name Origami Owl together because they “loved the way it sounded. We loved the meaning even more.”

OrigamioOwl ThinkstockPhotos 465633061 1024x941 - Eight Famous Owl Brand Names
Authentic Origami Owl

So there is no origami owl. It’s just a name — and a meaning. Make sense? Well, maybe the idea is also to convey some of the mystery owls represent. If you’re wondering what a real origami owl looks like, I’ve included a picture here.

Final Thoughts on Owl Brand Names

Of course, these eight firms are just the most iconic of owl-named brands. They merely scratch the surface. Bookstores, wineries, bars, restaurants, insurance companies and agencies, creative copy and design firms, property management companies — you name it, you can find almost any kind of business with “owl” in its name. Like I always say, it’s owl good. If you’re noodling around for an owl name for your business, you might want to try out this handy name generator over at Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/tools/business-name-generator

P.S. I am gathering resources for posts about bookstores, bars and wineries with owl names. If you know of any you think I should include, please let me know in a comment or send me an email. Thanks!

Why Are There No Owl Mascots in Big League Sports?

I would cry foul but of course the owl is not a fowl. It is a raptor. And to the contrary, fowls are well represented in top tier sports teams: St. Louis Cardinals, Baltimore Orioles, Toronto Blue-jays, Baltimore Ravens, etc.

Here’s what sticks in my craw though. Why no owls?

The Cincinnati Barn Owls Would Have Been a Great Name

ThinkstockPhotos 474726354 OwlBaseballLogo 1 - Why Are There No Owl Mascots in Big League Sports?

This would not be a problem today if the very first professional sports team in America had paid closer attention to how they got their start and chosen their name logically — as a wise old owl might suggest.

It’s been over 150 years since a gaggle of guys in Cincinnati called themselves “barn-stormers” and began selling tickets to spectators who wanted to see them play baseball. What name, I ask you, would have been more appropriate for barn-storming baseball players than the Barn Owls?

This lack of vision has persisted ever since. No top tier team has yet grasped the advantages of naming themselves after any of these elegant, perceptive, fiercely competitive birds.

Top Tier Sports Teams are For the Birds

Of 30 NBA teams, 30 Major League Baseball teams, 32 NFL teams, 31 NHL teams — 126 teams in all — not one of them has an owl mascot.

It’s not like they’ve ducked the entire avian class either. Thirteen teams are named after a bird of some kind. You could even say professional sports teams are for the birds except when it comes to owls:

NBA (30 teams):

  • Atlanta/St. Louis Hawks
  • New Orleans Pelicans

MBL (30 teams)

  • Toronto Blue Jays
  • St. Louis Cardinals
    Baltimore Orioles

NFL (32 teams)

  • Seattle Seahawks
  • Philadelphia Eagles
  • Arizona Cardinals
  • Baltimore Ravens
  • Atlanta Falcons

NHL (31 teams)

  • Pittsburgh Penguins
  • Anaheim Ducks

Yes, I know, there are also no Hummingbirds, Sparrows or Woodpeckers either. Not to mention no teams named for the blue footed booby, the great tit, the kaka or any of the dozens of other silly bird names. So what am I squawking about?

Well, for one thing, “owl” is not a silly name. When you consider a lot of the mascots that teams comes up, like the following, you could easily get the impression they think “silly” is a feature, not a defect:

The Hall of Lame Is Full of Mascots

ThinkstockPhotos 671629232 SillyMascot 1 - Why Are There No Owl Mascots in Big League Sports?

  • San Diego — now Los Angeles Chargers: No, not like horses charging. Maybe originally but now the name refers to electricity. Hence, their mascot: Boltman, a lightning bolt with a face and abs. The concept seemed positive in the beginning. Barron Hilton, who started the franchise, picked “Chargers” as the winner in a “name the team” contest. He liked how its cognate “charge” reminded him of the sound of bugles. But apparently, there were missteps between vision and execution and Boltman was born. Mentioning that Frankenstein was another unintended outcome seems appropriate.
  • New Orleans Saints: They have two mascots, Sir Saint and Gumbo the dog. Sir Saint looks like a caricature of Stan Smith from American Dad. Gumbo the dog is a Saint Bernard who enjoys Cajun food. There’s nothing hagiographic about either of them.
  • Golden State Warriors: The Warriors mascot for several years was Thunder. Thunder looked like a buffed up member of the Blue Man Group with a lightning bolt protruding from his head. He was discharged in 2007 when Oklahoma City decided it wanted the name for its new NBA franchise. (Maybe the Warriors finally got payback when they lured Kevin Durant from OKC in 2016.) The name would seem to work as a mascot for meteorological reasons, but “Rumble the Bison” represents the Thunder. Why not at least “Thunder the Bison”?

Boltman, Sir Saint, Gumbo the dog, Thunder. And I didn’t even get to the Tampa Bay Rays. What kind of animal is Raymond exactly? These are just a few of the silly team names that professional sports team geniuses have come up with. There are many more. (For more silly mascot names check out The Bleach Report’s Top 20 Worst Team Names.)

Given the lack of credible mascots getting hatched these days, why does the owl continue to be overlooked? We know that big professional teams are not adverse to bird mascots. So why do they chose birds that don’t stack up against the owl?

Cardinals, Maroons and Blue-Jays

Okay, naming the Baltimore Orioles was inevitable. The bird was famous before the baseball team. Civic pride is important.

Not so much the Cardinals. Naming the baseball team had nothing to do with birds. Someone said the uniform was a “lovely shade of cardinal.”

The uniform color was also the inspiration for the now Arizona Cardinals. When the NFL team started out in Chicago in 1920, the owners bought secondhand uniforms from a local college team. They were actually maroon, but Cardinals seemed like a better name than the Maroons. I’d have to agree.

According to Wikipedia, the name of the Toronto Blue Jays was inspired by a preference for the color blue. Majority team owner Labatt Breweries wanted a tie-in with its feature beer Labatt Blue. Gee, if only they were found locally, the Toronto Blue-footed Boobies might have been an option.

To my mind, choosing a mascot for its color kind of blindsides you to more important qualities. If you’re going to pick a bird as your mascot, don’t pick it for its color. Pick your bird because it symbolizes the qualities you want your team to emulate, right?

These Birds Don’t Hunt

What do cardinals do? They mostly sit perched eating berries, insects, spiders and seeds. What do orioles do? Same thing mostly, sit perched eating insects, fruit and nectar. Ditto for ducks, they waddle around eating insects, mollusks and plants. The blue jay is mainly a vegetarian.

On the aggressiveness scale, these birds don’t hunt.

Owls Hunt

ThinkstockPhotos 689090264 HuntingBarnOwl - Why Are There No Owl Mascots in Big League Sports?

What are the predominant qualities many teams strive for in a team name? Toughness, boldness, courageousness, competitiveness — all attributes inherent in team names like Hawks, Falcons, Eagles, Ravens, and Seahawks. I’m not including the (Toronto) Raptors which are are dinosaurs, even though in the long run (400 million years later) they evolved into birds.

Are these not the attributes also found in owls? Toughness, boldness, courageousness, competitiveness — yes, check all the boxes. Sure they look cuddly enough, with their big eyes and almost human appearance. But owls are killers. They’re predator birds. Some of your larger owls will take on hawks and falcons. Owls swallow their victims whole or rip them into shreds before swallowing them, for heaven’s sake!

What I’m saying is if you want fans and opponents to know you’re a bird with swagger, be an owl — not a non-threatening species like a cardinal or an oriole. Certainly not a duck, though I am a big Oregon Ducks fan. Every animal is somewhere in the food chain but why chose a name that screams prey?

In a survey of the world’s ten most formidable birds of prey, six are eagles, two are vultures and — get this — two are owls: Blakiston’s Fish Owl and the Eurasian Eagle Owl.

College Teams Are Owl On Board

ThinkstockPhotos 533998491 OwlMascot - Why Are There No Owl Mascots in Big League Sports?
According to one survey, the owl is the 17th most popular college mascot name. (The most popular name for a college team is bulldog, which might be a bone for bulldog advocates to pick with major league sports.)

The first school in the country to adopt the owl as its mascot was Temple University in the 1880s. Since classes were first held at night, its students were referred to as “night owls.” Hooter is the costumed mascot’s name. But like many colleges with owl mascots, Temple also maintains a live owl. Currently, Temple’s live owl representative “Stella,” a Great Horned Owl, resides at Elmwood Park Zoo, near Philadelphia.

Florida Atlantic University’s costume mascot is Owlsey. Its Boca Raton campus is actually a Burrowing Owls habitat that was named an official owl sanctuary by the Audubon Society in 1971.

Other college teams with owl mascots include:

  • Brandeis University — Ollie the Owl (team name: the Judges)
  • Bryn Mawr College — Predator D. Owl
  • Keene State College – the Owls
  • Kennesaw State University – Scrappy the Owl
  • Oregon Institute of Technology — Hootie the Owl (team name: Hustlin’ Owls)
  • Rice University — Sammy the Whiskered Screech Owl
  • Rowan University — Prof the owl, “Whoo RU” (team name: Rowan Profs)
  • Southern Connecticut State University – The Southern Owl (team name: Fighting Owls)
  • University of Maine at Presque Isle — Owls
  • Westfield State University — Nestor the Owl
  • William Woods University — Screech the Owl

In addition, there are hundreds of high school, community college and semi pro teams with owl mascots.

Are Owls Pigeon-holed as Too Smart to Be Athletic?

WiseOwlPerchedonBooks - Why Are There No Owl Mascots in Big League Sports?

Why is the owl good enough for schools but not major sports teams? Maybe because most people think foremost of how smart owls are supposed to be, not their hunting prowess. To most people they’re more mathletes than athletes.

In Western culture, the owl’s association with Athena, goddess of wisdom, has always defined it as a symbol of learning and wisdom. Pictured wearing a cap and gown and perched on a stack of books, who wants that image for a major sports team? Teams mainly want brawn, not brains. They prefer players who kick ass, not go to the head of the class.

Of course owls possess the same aggressive characteristics as other raptors, as we’ve seen. Public perception is just not focused on these qualities. But why not? Major professional sports teams have to be both smart and aggressive, so why not adopt a mascot that also reflects those qualities?

It’s Never Too Late for Owls

Owl is not lost. There are plenty of opportunities to right this wrong. Teams get renamed all time. Right now several opportunities exist for a top tier professional sports teams to adopt an owl mascot. Here are a few suggestions:

DC Owls: The Redskins have a PR problem. Sure, a Washington Post poll conducted in 2016 found that 9 out of 10 Native Americans are not bothered by the name. But what about the 10% who are? That’s about one million people. As Dan Steinberg in the Washington Post says, “If you invite 10 friends to a dinner party and one leaves in tears, was the night a success?” There’s pros and cons, is all I’m saying. My main point is, this is a perfect opportunity to right two wrongs!

Owls figure prominently in Native American culture. The Cherokee who lived in western Virginia thought only the cougar and the owl were strong and brave enough to endure the upheaval of creation, which is why only they are endowed with the power to see at night. So how about the DC Owls? Barn Owls, Barred Owls and Great Horned Owls can be found in parts of DC. Plus the Thomas Jefferson High School teams in Alexandria already call themselves the DC Owls.

Golden State Owls: The Golden State Warriors are currently without a mascot after losing Thunder. So how about the Golden State Owls? Many kinds of owls can found in the Bay Area, including in Marin County the Northern Spotted Owl. But there is no Golden State Owl, you say. Well, tell Cal there are no Golden Bears either. Golden State Owls could also pay homage to one of the great bars of San Francisco,
The Owl Tree Bar, located at Post and Taylor for over 40 years. The legendary bartender Bobby Cook collected and displayed his vast collection of owls there until he died in 2006. But the legend endures as a sports bar now. Perfect.

Las Vegas Owls: Oakland Raiders fans feel the decision to move the team from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2020 or sooner was a slap in their face. So retiring the Raiders name would be a concession to them — and if another NFL team decides to relocate to Oakland the Raiders name could be revived. Sportswriter Des Bieler in the Washington Post has drolly suggested the new name should be the “Sinners,” since Las Vegas is “Sin City.” In that case, how about the “Sodom and Gomorrahs”? I don’t know. Talk about a slap in the face. Let’s give the people of Las Vegas a little more credit.

I would suggest taking a name change cue from a different slogan. “The city that never sleeps” is supposed to apply to New York but the city that never sleeps is really Las Vegas. Vegas casinos are the biggest circadian cycle disrupters in the world. There is no way to tell what time of day it is when you’re entombed in one. Nocturnal, diurnal or crepuscular. It’s all good. Just like owls. Several species of owls are found in the Las Vegas area: Barn Owls, Burrowing Owls, Flammulated Owls, Great Horned Owls, Long-eared Owls, Northern Saw-whet Owls, Short-eared Owls and Western Screech-Owls.

ThinkstockPhotos 490243256 OwlWingSpread - Why Are There No Owl Mascots in Big League Sports?

Is It Time For an Owl Movement?

Let’s get serious for a moment. Many people do not have a proper appreciation of owls. I don’t mean just because of the mistaken notion of owls as some kind of passive creatures who spend all their time cogitating. That’s superficial. The real significance of owls is the role they play in a balanced ecosystem. A national sports franchise could help build awareness of the profound importance of what that means. One of the primary benefits of sports teams to a community is how they inspire our youth. What if as a side benefit a sports team could also help educate youth — and adults— about owls and their importance to the environment? Smart, competitive, and concerned about the planet: What’s not to like about owls?

Besides wouldn’t it be a hoot for a professional sports team to have an owl mascot? Think of how much the fans could annoy their opponents during, say, basketball games by shrieking “hoot, hoot” all the time. Of course “hoot, hoot, hoot” for a three-pointer.