A slightly bizarre proposal

Saturday afternoon, after two full girl scout camps, I helped with a proposal!

A guy contacted me about two months ago to see if we could have an owl fly in with a ring for his proposal to his girlfriend (who is a big owl fan, apparently). Unfortunately, because our birds can only be used for educational purposes, we couldn't offer this to him. Instead we decided on a tour through Owl Forest and a private meeting with Barney, the Great Horned Owl, culminating in his finding a ring in a fake owl pellet and proposing to his love. All of this had to seem like it was just happenstance, though.

(The owl pellet idea came from a goofy conversation between Helen and I and was more of a joke than anything, but the guy really liked the idea. I felt a little nervous about it, since it would technically be almost entirely my fault if she said no because she thought the proposal was disgusting. He was positive that she would like it, though, so we went along with it).

I met them at the entrance of Owl Forest after my last camp, pretending like I had never met the guy before and certainly wasn't there to talk to THEM specifically. I was speaking with another group (carefully corralled into talking to me so the whole thing would seem more natural) and when they came up I casually offered to walk them through the forest since I was at the end of my shift for the day. They agreed, she was none the wiser and we went through the exhibits until we 'stumbled' upon Barney and Helen waiting at the end of the forest.

The soon-to-be fiancee was enthralled and launched into asking questions about Barney, who was being really territorial and hooting up a storm. Helen subtly introduced the topic of owl pellets by discussing how to find owls in their territories in the wild, but struggled to really describe an owl pellet...Jenn to the rescue! I pulled out the tupperware container holding the fake owl pellet and offered it to the guy to pull apart, so that they could see the bones inside.

Only there wasn't a bone inside, there was a diamond engagement ring. He went on one knee, she started to cry and she said yes.

Here is a real owl pellet:











Here is my fake rendition, made of dryer lint, stuffed animal fur, diluted Elmer's glue and some dirt on the outside:

Something new every day, folks! Something new every day.