Alfie and Me

What Owls Know, What Humans Believe

By: Carl Safina

Narrated by: Carl Safina

Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

When ecologist Carl Safina and his wife, Patricia, took in a near-death baby owl, they expected that, like other wild orphans they'd rescued, she'd be a temporary presence. But Alfie's feathers were not growing correctly, requiring prolonged care. As Alfie grew and gained strength, she became a part of the family, joining a menagerie of dogs and chickens and making a home for herself in the backyard.

Alfie & Me is the story of the remarkable impact this little owl would have on their lives. The continuing bond of trust following her freedom—and her raising of her own wild brood—coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a year in which Carl and Patricia were forced to spend time at home without the normal obligations of work and travel. Witnessing all the fine details of their feathered friend's life offered Carl and Patricia a view of existence from Alfie's perspective.

One can travel the world and go nowhere; one can be stuck keeping the faith at home and discover a new world. Safina's relationship with an owl made him want to better understand how people have viewed humanity's relationship with nature across cultures and throughout history. Interwoven with Safina's keen observations, insight, and reflections, Alfie & Me is a work of profound beauties and magical timing harbored within one upended year.

©2023 Carl Safina (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

A must read

Never imagined an owl would be the antidote to covid and how to better exist in the world. Thank you, Allie.

Wide ranging

If one has never had survey exposure to wisdom literature, world religions, ecology, cosmology, and almost every other subject, this is your read.

Loved it!

I loved the book. I loved the story of the owl, Alfie. I learned a lot from Safina’s History lesson on the famous philosophers, and I thought his narration was great. I appreciated his thoughts on life and the environment.
It was a wonderful audio book.

I just did not want this book to end it was wonderful

I really like the way the author wove the story along with thoughtful meditation on the way we treat our world, the way we treat our animals, and the animals that share our planet as well as the planet itself.

Our need to recognize our interconnectedness with all of nature

The author's story of the owls and our need to see differently our relationship with all of nature was compelling.

What was author's main focusing?

Dislike--- too much time explaining history and referencing other authors and their theories. Owl was minor character.

One of the very best

I have always enjoyed writings by Carl Safina, who I think is one of the very best nature writers of all time, and to me this was one of the best of his works.

Resilience of owls

This story takes place and was possible due to the increased time at home because of the pandemic lockdowns. The main character is an owl that was rescued it’s rescuers named Alfie. It follows Alfie from youth thru maturity.
Pros: learning about this owl and her mate and owlets, and their interactions with their rescuers.
Cons: an exorbitant amount of philosophizing, probably expected from a college professor/author.

Not What I Appears

As a biologist and lover of birds that maintains a variety of nesting boxes, sharing the nest cams with avian behavioral biologists, I was looking forward to this book. What was written about Alfie's behavior was interesting, but finding that over 50% of the book was philosophy and comparative religions was a real downer. That is not what I wanted and if I had wanted such I would have searched for books on comparative religion.

Need more natural history, less armchair philosophy.

There was too much time spent trying to impress the reader with obscure quotes from Aristotle and Descartes and hardly anything about owls in comparison. What a yawner.