It’s amazing how something can catch my eye now that I’m always on the lookout for cool photos. Take this owl, for instance. He probably perched atop the Newgard Chiropractic Building in Mandan long before I moved back to our fair state…yet it has taken me almost thirty years to really notice him. Am I that dense, or did I just forget? Odds are fifty-fifty on that one.

As I wrote in an earlier post regarding the old Mandan Library building, the old structures that make Mandan’s Main Street special are full of character and should be preserved. I hadn’t intended to follow it up with a post of this nature, but my travels took me to Mandan today and the tops of the buildings caught my eye. Thus it was natural for me to spot this owl.

I’m sure the coat of black paint on the building’s features makes it especially important to keep birds from perching on the features of the building and…well, making it white. What better way to discourage other birds than by putting up a predatory bird like an owl? Perhaps it works.

Hopefully they’re having better luck than the City of Mandan, who hung plastic versions of owls like this from the beams of the 6th Avenue underpass in hopes of chasing away the pigeons. It didn’t take the pests long to figure out that there was no real threat, and the plastic owls dangled impotently beneath the railroad tracks to no avail. It was funny to see, though…the inability of man to control nature. Kinda reminds me of the people who swear we need electric cars and flourescent light bulbs or the planet’s doom looms overhead!