WILD WITHIN: HOW RESCUING OWLS INSPIRED A FAMILY

It’s impossible to be depressed about a lethargic adoption process when a baby owl sporting a bad mullet sits on a perch in the living room. Although author Melissa Hart and her husband struggled three years to adopt a child—first from China, then from Vietnam, finally choosing to adopt from Oregon’s foster care system—they kept their sanity by learning to train owls at a local wildlife center. Weird work, to be sure; on their first date, they drove two hours to pick up 600 pounds of frozen rats and an orphaned fledgling Barred owl. Though talons terrified Melissa, she began scrubbing mews alongside Jonathan and ended up committing seven years to caring for birds threatened by poison and gunshot and habitat loss—work that reversed their decision to live child-free and plunged them into the convoluted world of adoption.

Through lively prose and compelling imagery, Wild Within illuminates the unexpected connections between injured and orphaned children and birds of prey . . . and the people who work to help both. The memoir tells of feeding fledgling raptors in a ghost costume and entertaining a baby Barred owl in our living room while Jonathan and Melissa worked to adopt a child. In between caring for raptors, they found themselves faced with heart-breaking decisions about prenatal addiction and disabilities; kicked out of China’s program during political upheaval; confronted with ethical issues and a child’s death in Vietnam; and at last grateful to adopt a foster child from the Department of Human Services.

During this time, Melissa evolved from Los Angeles urbanite, clueless about the definition of the word raptor, to glove-training a permanently-injured baby Barred owl and an irascible imprinted Snowy owl with a penchant for fornicating with her sneakers. Wild Within is a testimony to the salvation of immersing oneself in a passion . . . even if one suffers a talon through the hand and nearly gets scalped by a wild owl in the process.