[Tweeters] owl pellets

[Gary Bletsch]

Dear Tweeters,
A young man from Oregon used to pull up to my barnyard in a beat-up little car once or twice a year. He had my permission to collect the Barn Owl pellets from my barn. He somehow made a living collecting them and selling them to one of the companies that markets them to science teachers.
One time a different guy came by. I told him that I already had a fellow who gathered my pellets. The new guy was quite pushy. He actually walked right into the barn after I had told him not to. I gave him ten seconds to shove off before I called the sheriff, and he figured out that I meant business!
After a few years, the young fellow stopped showing up. We had quite a pile of pellets. I contacted one of the owl-pellet companies, and they said that they'd pay us a certain modest sum if we'd send them the owl pellets ourselves. My son was just a middle-schooler then; he went and gathered a whole bucket of pellets, and we boxed them up with plenty of soft packaging material. He waited weeks and weeks for his little paycheck, and it never came.
When I called the company, they gave me a bunch of hooey about how the pellets weren't good enough quality. I am sure they just sold them for a tidy profit. As far as I'm concerned, that company can go take a long walk off a short pier! Hopefully there is at least one honest competitor out there.
Yours truly,
Gary Bletsch
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman11.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20201202/73469a2a/attachment.html>