I don't know how Carl Hiaasen even gets out of bed in the morning.

The Miami author of all things Florida-weird also penned "Hoot," a middle-school tale of kids who successfully rally to save burrowing owls from restaurant construction. In true South Florida fashion, it would have paved over the miniscule birds, feathers and all, for a pancake franchise, parking lot and all. Birds and kids win. Readers do, too: Here in the Free State of Cement, even a fictional environmental victory is better than none.

Would it be too much to hope that the Newbery Honor-winning book planted a seed of support for burrowing owls everywhere?

Is water wet? Are cats humanity's masters? Yes. Yes, it is too much to ask.

Florida's burrowing owls are a threatened subspecies protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. They are Taylor Swift engagement-picture cute. They are a welcome part of Florida's rich ecosystem.

As such, they have been marked for destruction.

It's enough to break an environmentally inclined author's heart. Plus, it screams for a rewrite of the last chapter of "Hoot."

To be fair, Florida Atlantic University and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission are not calling it destruction. They are calling it non-lethal harassment. FAU needs the scrubland the owls live on to build new dorms. So it's tiny little eviction notices all around.

Both the owls and FAU moved in sometime in the 1960s, and it's been more or less peaceful coexistence ever since. The FAU football team is known as the Owls. Owlsley is the school mascot. In 2019, FAU gave Owlsley a sidekick in a smaller owl mascot. From FAU: "One day, Owlsley met a gopher tortoise, who spun a tale of an adventurous baby burrowing owl." That owl's name was Hoot.

But now, hoot harassment is the order of the day. FAU students are collecting signatures to stop the dorm project. They're up to 12,300. FAU is quietly collecting bulldozers. They're up to just enough.

FAU emphasizes that the number of owls has tripled in the last year. Artificial burrows are being built. Careful attention is being paid to ensure eggs and flightless hatchlings are not disturbed. All are admirable efforts. And FAU is within its rights to feel a bit peckish about owl headlines. When Boca Raton-based private prison operator GEO Group tried to buy naming rights to FAU's stadium, students promptly responded by dubbing it Owlcatraz. The deal collapsed just before "jailbird" T-shirts could be printed up.

At least the Fighting Owls' stadium was not in danger of being packed up and shown the door.

The feathered owls, on the other hand, must vacate the premises. Non-lethal harassments intended to roll up the welcome mat include piling dirt over burrows. Environmentally sensitive jump scares were mentioned. There's always a loud music option, the psyop used on Manual Noriega when the Panamanian dictator holed up in the Vatican Embassy and refused to come out. It seems cruel to Bon Jovi a bird, but there you have it.

Not surprisingly, this has caught Hiaasen's attention. Posting on social media, he suggested signing the pro-owl online petition, "one good way to non-sarcastically harass the university into changing its plans.