Victoria “Tori” Marshall, 38, has spent the last decade of her life working for better wildlife education in the Verde Valley. She has spent the majority of that time paired with animal ambassador Moonlight, a male western screech owl who can frequently be seen perched on her hand while she’s working as a park ranger Red Rock State Park and as a volunteer with Runnin’ W Wildlife Rehab Center, which was founded by Billy Harvey.
Marshall also leads a majority of the bird walks at the state park and has documented 163 species of birds at the park over the last two years.
“I’m originally from Maine and hopped around with the National Park Service for a while, but ended up out here [in] early 2014,” Marshall said. “I got lucky enough to be roped in with the nonprofit that I was working with at the time with the Runnin’ W Wildlife Rehab Center in Cornville to be able to do programs and do the training to be able to handle and transport their educational birds.”
Moonlight was brought into the Runnin’ W about 11 years ago, and was named by local bronze sculptor Kim Kori.
“I asked Billy if I could release an owl someday,” Kori wrote on her website. “[Billy] said yes, and that he had a western screech owl that would be ready before long. I went to meet the little owl, who was a most adorable creature. Billy said I could name him … Just before he was to be released, a vet looked him over and discovered he was blind in one eye and wouldn’t be able to hunt properly in the wild. In the meantime, a group of us were organizing a fundraiser for the rescue center. The artists in the gallery that represents me … were each asked to donate a piece of art. To contribute, I decided to sculpt Moonlight.”
“I always like to tell people we started learning together and the rest is history,” Marshall said. “He was hit by a car over in Chino and came in with what ended up being permanent nerve damage in his eyes. So his eyes are basically dilated all the time. If you think about it, if you’ve gone to an optometrist and gotten your eyes dilated, he’s basically just getting a little too much light. So he’s mostly blind, especially during the day.”
Marshall did comment that Moonlight appears to be “up for programs at any hour of the day,” which she finds surprising given an owl’s nocturnal nature.
“I can grab him in the middle of the day and he knows we’re going to work and he has to earn mice,” Marshall said, noting his tendency to eat the heads off mice and leave the rest. “He might try to take off on me a couple of times, but he settles right down. And we’ve done everything from day-long programs within the community to sitting for artists for hours at a time. Our favorite thing is school and kids’ programs to teach these kids while they’re still young about respecting wildlife.”
When Moonlight first became an animal ambassador, he would often play dead or take a nap during programs, and Marshall said he would sometimes fall off her glove.
“He’s come very far since then,” Marshall said. “We haven’t have any issues since bringing him home, he’s got a lot of confidence.”
Moonlight’s daily care includes a diet of two small mice — “I’ve got a freezer full of mice in the garage” — regular baths and nail trimming. Because of his eye condition, Moonlight stays indoors most of the time. “He’s got a big cage at home, practically his own room,” Marshall said, and her husband, an architect, built ramps into his cage to accommodate Moonlight’s preference for running rather than flying.
For the first 18 months that Moonlight was living with Marshall, he never hooted, but he has warmed up to it since and hasn’t stopped.
“It’s a little bit more difficult than it looks,” Marshall said of being Moonlight’s caretaker. “A lot of people are like, ‘Oh, he’s so tiny’ … He hoots quite a bit just before sunrise and likes to hoot around like eight o’clock at night, 10 o’clock at night. When we first moved into our new house in Cottonwood, the window in his room didn’t have a screen and I would be nervous about leaving the window open and forget to shut it at night when he was really hooting. Because I was worried I’d wake up in the morning and there’d be a roomful [or a parliament] of owls.”
Marshall is planning more programs for the fall and coordinating with Red Rock State Park for outreach events. Upcoming events will be announced on the state park’s website and the Runnin’ W Wildlife Rehab Center’s Facebook page.