Why You Will Never Beat an Owl in a Staring Contest

The owl has never once blinked first, and it knows what you did.

A surprising number of problems in life begin with a person looking at an animal and thinking they could take it, in some harmless contest of skill. We have compiled the following list as a public service.

Contests to avoid

• Staring, with an owl. It has trained all its life and has very little else going on.
• Hide and seek, with a chameleon. He is on your shoulder, and he has been for an hour.
• Thumb wrestling, with a crab. You will hear a small click and then you will hear yourself.
• Holding your breath, with a turtle. It will look at you with pity from under the water.
• Chess, with a crow. It will lose and then remember your face for the rest of its life.

Contests you may win

A sack race with a heron is fairly even. A goose will accept a shouting match, but it is rarely worth the win. A sheep can be beaten at almost anything, and it will not mind.

A note about geese

Do not make eye contact. Do not offer to settle things outside. Most of the serious injuries reported to our office have been to people’s pride, and most of those were caused by geese.

If you have learned one of these lessons personally, we would like to hear about it. We keep all such reports in the notebook.