Hoot

by Carl Hiaasen

There, standing by the hole and peering curiously at one of the meatballs, was the smallest owl that he had ever seen.

The little burrowing owls depicted in HOOT are real birds. There were lots of them in the fields and old pastures near my house, when I was Roy’s age. Then the bulldozers came to clear the land for condos and apartments and shopping malls, and the owl burrows got buried. That experience is where the story in the book came from. It’s straight out of my childhood, except that the ending in the novel is different than what actually happened. Honestly, I like my version better.