Encore: Owl pursuits

In the fall of 2021, students at UNC Chapel Hill's Hinton James dorm—known locally as "Hojo," the farthest and shabbiest freshman dorm on campus—found themselves under siege by an owl. Videos circulated on Instagram and the meme account UNC Chicks showed the bird dive-bombing students in the parking lot, chasing a woman who screamed and ran as the owl pursued her close behind, and even accepting a cigarette from someone who offered it. The caption on one video read: "this hojo owl got me fucked up. Back to North Campus I go." But what seemed like a straightforward story about a territorial barred owl turned out to have a stranger explanation.

The owl that brought freshmen together

Alan Chen, a first-year student living in a slightly less crappy dorm up the hill, first heard about the owl when a friend's girlfriend named Kaylee came running into his suite frantically, saying she'd been chased by an owl for 30 minutes. Intrigued, Alan went out to find the bird and "sort of implanted myself in the mythos of the owl from that day on." He started reaching out to people who'd posted owl encounter videos and eventually wrote a column in the student newspaper, the Daily Tar Heel, arguing that the owl was a good thing—character building, bringing people together.