One big beautiful bird

A hard-bitten cultural journalist feels the shock and awe of a wild creature

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By Saska Snellman
     
      The eagle owl flaps its impressive wings a few times, takes to the air and glides low across the pitch to settle with the most astonishing grace and precision on the crossbar of the Belgian goal.
      In the 20 minutes of this international so far, there has been nothing on the field to touch this brilliant individual performance.
      Huuh-ka-ja! Huuh-ka-ja! Huuh-ka-ja!.
      The cry is taken up and rapidly spreads around the entire stadium. A star is born.
     
The big bird is completely unfazed by the din as 30,000 football fans chant his Finnish name.
      Then a photographer moves in a little too close for comfort and sends him off his perch: a few flaps, a smooth glide below the radar at grass level, a brief soar, and yet another elegant 10-point landing, this time on the Finnish crossbar.
      Huuh-ka-ja!
     
God, how utterly helpless the humans in the stadium suddenly looked!
      The place was seething with police, security staff, and officials from the Finnish FA and UEFA alike, all equipped with the regulation plastic cards dangling from their necks.
      They were ready for anything - blind-drunk pitch invaders on the Danish model, hooligans, political protesters, and terrorists - but evidently not for an eagle owl.
      The 22 heroes of the beautiful game meanwhile looked like lost boys in knee-length shorts.
     
Those of us in the crowd were delighted beyond belief, because we knew we were witnessing something authentic and pure, something that had not been photoshopped, planned around an advertising agency table, or branded for the tourists.
      Not yet, at least.
      Huuhkaja Extra! Huuhkaja Fan Souvenirs! Huuhkaja T-shirts! Huuhkaja.com! Huuhkajat FC!
      Doubtless the various product ideas are already taking wing, but who cares? I was there; I saw the real deal, an eagle owl that dared to question the right of us humans to invade his space, before he soared into the air and disappeared into the gathering dusk.
      Huuh-ka-ja!
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 9.6.2007

More on this subject:
 At least five eagle owls live in Helsinki (an article from March 2007)
 Bubi the eagle owl has not returned to the Olympic Stadium
 FACTFILE: How Bubo bubo became Bubi

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finland 2 Belgium 0: Owl right on the night (7.6.2007)

See also:
  A picture cavalcade from Wednesday evening (captions in Finnish)

Links:
  A search on YouTube under "huuhkaja" and/or "eagle owl" will produce a sizeable number of video clips, professional and amateur.
  A video from Ilta-Sanomat. The newspaper also carried a full-paged fan poster of the bird in its Friday issue.
  The merchandising has begun. Huuhkaja T-shirts emerged within a few days.
  Eurasian eagle owl (Wikipedia)

SASKA SAARIKOSKI / Helsingin Sanomat
saska.saarikoski@hs.fi