A tale of mistaken identity, good intentions, and the curious creatures of Omena — both feathered and otherwise.

When a homemade sign appeared at the end of the driveway pointing the way to "OWLS," it seemed like the start of a small mystery. What followed blended concern for local wildlife, a dash of detective work, and an unexpected twist that still has the neighbors laughing.

I was coming home from the store when I noticed something odd at the end of our driveway — a large, hand-lettered plywood sign propped against the mailbox. It read simply: "OWLS →", the arrow pointing down our driveway.

Now, our drive runs straight toward the Leelanau Conservancy property that borders our land before turning sharply toward our house. Since that preserve has no public trails or access points, our driveway could easily look like the way in.

I stopped and stared. Owls? My first thought was of the Barred Owls that nest in the woods nearby — our evening companions whose mellow call, "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?", drifts through the trees on still nights. My second thought was less comforting.

Just days earlier, I'd read an article in The Guardian about the growing problem of rare bird sightings going viral online. It described how even well-meaning nature lovers can end up harming the wildlife they hope to admire. In Scotland, conservationists working to save the last wild capercaillie — only about 530 remain — have struggled to protect the birds from photographers and birders who stray too close to the "leks" where males display each spring. "Even a brief disturbance," one project manager warned, "can make the difference between birds breeding, or not."

The article went on to describe how social media has magnified the problem. In 2022, packs of photographers descended on Shetland to glimpse the elusive lanceolated warbler, potentially causing the bird to abandon the area. A photographer in Wales was fined for disturbing a nesting European honey buzzard, and in Australia, orchid hunters have converged by the hundreds on sites of rare blooms. "When something's that rare," said ecologist Robert Davis, "you could single-handedly push it to extinction."

Davis acknowledged that social media's impact is small compared with habitat loss or invasive species, but it fuels a damaging impulse: "The rarer something is, the more people want to see it." Conservationists are trying to counter that trend. In the Cairngorms, a "Let It Be" campaign has urged people to admire the capercaillie from afar — and it's working, with 55 percent fewer visitors to breeding sites this year. As one natural history writer put it, "Social media is great for drawing people's attention, but there needs to be a level of discretion."

That story stayed with me. So when I saw a big plywood sign pointing down our driveway, I immediately imagined our owls at the center of some digital frenzy — people following directions from Facebook or eBird, cars pulling up, tripods unfolding. I took the sign down right away, then called the Conservancy to ask whether they'd organized an owl walk or children's program. "No," they said, "we don't have anything like that planned."

The mystery lingered for a few days.

Then, at the post office, my wife ran into our neighbor — the one who shares our driveway and helps maintain it. During their conversation, he asked, completely baffled, "Do you know what might have happened to my sign?"

"Mike took it down. He was afraid there was some social media campaign going on and people were going to come harass our Barred Owls."

There was a pause. Then he blinked, and said slowly, "Oh... no. That was for my wife whose group was meeting at our place — the Omena Women's Literary Society. The O.W.L.S.!"

Mystery solved. And yes — strange owls, indeed.

I called the Conservancy back to confess my mistake, and we all had a good laugh. But the episode left me thinking about how easily our instincts to protect nature can run away with us — and how, sometimes, they're exactly what the world needs more of.

The real owls, of course, remained blissfully unaware through it all, calling softly in the dark as they always do: "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?".