February 10, 2024 – 6:45 AM CDT
The Superb Owl League has canceled its annual celebration of the well-known and popular bird of prey. SOL President Frank Greathorn made the last-minute announcement just a day before the grand gathering was set to take place just outside Las Vegas, Nevada, on February 11. “To my fellow members of SOL, there is no other way to put it: we are truly shit-out-of-luck,” Greathorn sighed. “The Budget 5 Motel informed us that it was raising their room rate to $1555.55 per night for the weekend due to some other event happening in Las Vegas on Sunday. I knew this would not fly with our parliament of owl lovers.” Greathorn was puzzled when he found every hotel and motel within 100 miles was completely booked. “Who wants to go anywhere but a Caribbean island on a weekend in February?” he asked no one in particular, while shaking his head.
SOL Secretary Andrea “Snowy” Wheitoul noted that in the ’50s and early ’60s, their gala event was always a smashing success. She noted that they haven’t had a trouble-free Superb Owl Sunday gathering in more than fifty years even after changing the date from early- to mid- to late-January over the years, before settling on the first Sunday in February almost 20 years ago. In 2022 SOL made the bold step to move the signature event out one more week to avoid further problems, but still they persisted. “Who is to blame for our string of bad luck, I wonder. Who?”
At press time a flabbergasted Greathorn was receiving offers on craigslist of nearly $3000 for his Kansas-City-to-Las-Vegas roundtrip ticket.