We had a barred owl come in a while back, hit a window somewhere out past the reservoir, mostly fine physically once we’d checked her over, no breaks, no obvious internal injury, just stunned and stressed in the way any wild animal is stressed by suddenly being handled by the exact species it spends its whole life avoiding. The problem was she wouldn’t eat. Not picky, not slow, just completely refused everything we offered for three straight days, which for a bird her size is genuinely dangerous, not a quirk you can wait out indefinitely.

We tried everything in the usual playbook. Different food, different times of day, less handling beforehand in case our presence was the issue, more darkness in the enclosure, a towel over part of it so she’d feel less watched. Nothing. I’d go home each of those three evenings and not really be able to let it go, running through what else it could possibly be, and I’ll admit I brought some of that home with me in a way that wasn’t great for anyone at game night that week either.

Then on the fourth day, with no change I can point to, nothing we did differently, she just ate. Fully, calmly, like nothing had ever been wrong. I still don’t have an actual answer for what changed, and one of the vets I work with, who’s been doing this far longer than me, said something that’s stuck with me since: sometimes you don’t get the why, you just get the eating, and you have to be okay with that.

I’ve been thinking about that line a lot outside of work too, if I’m honest, this idea that you can do everything technically correct and the actual turning point still arrives on its own schedule for reasons that stay opaque to you. It’s not a comfortable thing for someone who likes solving puzzles as much as I do, games where there’s always a right sequence if you look hard enough. Wild animals don’t hand you the right sequence. Sometimes the honest, complete account of what happened is just: we waited, we didn’t know why, and then she ate.