This owl from St. Louis just filmed with Martin Scorsese

A few days before filming with Martin Scorsese, Donovan Meeks and his female owl, Eli (rhymes with “steely”), are at Lewis Park in University City, hanging out in the shade. There’s a low metal perch set up on the grass; Eli stands atop it, alert, squawking every five or six seconds. “That’s just a baby squawk,” Meeks says. 

On this April afternoon, Eli, a Eurasian eagle-owl, is less than a year old but already has a high-profile gig lined up: She’s scheduled to do a scene in Scorsese’s upcoming movie Killers of the Flower Moon, which is currently in production in Oklahoma. Her job will be to fly into a house through an open window. Meeks has trained her to do this, but he knows she won’t cooperate if she’s feeling full and plump. So the idea today is for Eli to exercise. He takes her onto his forearm and into a clearing. She unfolds her 6-pound body and flaps off, landing on the back of a nearby house.

Meeks, who is 28 years old, has kept birds most of his life. As a boy, he became enthralled by a parakeet his mother gave to his half-brother, Ryan Stokes. “He was super excited about it,” recalls Stokes, now a doctor living in Kansas City. The two siblings were always outside playing with bugs and family dogs, Stokes says, but Meeks’ affinity for fauna stood out: “He just understands animals and their needs.” 

With Eli off doing her own thing, Meeks carries a picnic basket into the clearing. He reaches inside and pulls out a trembling white homing pigeon. This is not lunch for his owl, I learn. (Meeks says that Eli only eats the quail, mice, and rabbits that he breeds for her diet; she almost never pursues wild prey.) Rather, he has brought this pigeon and a second one just so they can stretch their wings a bit. He releases them. They hang around Lewis Park for a while—“being nosy,” Meeks jokes—then flutter back to his home in Jennings. Homing pigeons are his favorite animal, he says. For years, he has been contracted by funeral homes around the area to release them at funeral services; he even did this at the burial of Mike Brown, whose death sparked the Ferguson unrest. 

But the star of the show that day at Lewis Park is Eli. Meeks makes a long mouth whistle to coax her back. “Come on, baby girl!” he calls. The owl returns to him, and they go back under the shady tree. It’s a hot day. She swivels her head around as if dissatisfied. Meeks pulls out a plastic spray bottle. “I got whatcha need, baby!” he says and spritzes water into her mouth. During the 90 minutes I’m there, various dog walkers, parents, and children stop to check out the owl. Her full name is Elisheva, he explains to them. “What does that name mean?” inquires one woman, crouching. “It means ‘God’s promise’ in Hebrew,” Meeks replies. The woman processes this. “That’s beautiful,” she says.

Birds of prey can inflict grave harm upon humans, so ownership of them is tightly regulated. Last year, Meeks earned his Missouri falconry permit. He adopted Eli from Hawk Creek Wildlife Center, a rehabilitation and raptor-breeding nonprofit in New York state. She was about three weeks old; her eyes, he recalls, were as orange as the full moon. Eli is a creche-reared imprint, meaning that she started out with her parents but came to rely on Meeks as though he were a parent and, to a large degree, will now self-identify with humans rather than owls. Their bond strengthened last winter, he says, when they were in Forest Park and Eli got attacked by a red-tailed hawk. She wasn’t injured but fled into a tree and refused to come down. Meeks hopped on a video call with Erik Swanson, his mentor in New Jersey, who coached him through it. 

The two men had met over the phone. Meeks heard that Swanson hunted with his own owl, so Meeks called him for advice. “Owls are very, very hard to train,” explains Swanson. “When I saw what he was doing, I said, ‘What are you doing this summer?’” Swanson owns East Coast Falcons, which specializes in flying trained raptors around a given area to scare off nuisance birds. Swanson hired Meeks to bring Eli to Ocean City, New Jersey, to meander on the boardwalk and intimidate all the meddlesome seagulls. Swanson also has contacts in the film industry; he was the one who suggested Meeks for the Scorsese shoot. (In early May, Swanson will report that, according to Scorsese’s producers, Meeks and Eli “nailed it” on the set.)

On that spring day at Lewis Park, though, Meeks and Eli are still preparing. Meeks gives Eli a bit of mouse for a snack. I ask about her lifespan. He says such an owl could live for 40 or 50 years in captivity, no problem. She may even outlive her caretaker. “It’ll be a lifelong relationship,” he says, looking at her. “A bird-and-man bond for sure.”