Pitchers and catchers report in a month, but a snowy owl already visited Great American Ball Park

The grounds crew at Great American Ball Park is used to avian visitors. Pigeons love to eat the ryegrass seed. Peregrine falcons and a variety of hawks love to eat the pigeons.

It's a circle of life thing, really.

But last weekend, word of an unusual visitor started to spread.

Employees in the engineering department had reported sightings of a snowy owl hanging out around the building over the weekend. On Tuesday, head groundskeeper Stephen Lord saw it with his own eyes.

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"It was pretty amazing. We were all thrown off at what it was to begin with. We get a lot of falcons and red-tailed hawks," he said. But snowy owls are, well, different.

It's just not their amber eyes or their ghostly white feathers that make them so charismatic.

It's their size.

"It's an enormous bird," Lord said.

Lord, in proud baseball tradition, proceeded to give a play-by-play of the owl's flight path.

The snowy bundle of excellence was first spotted shortly after 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 9 sitting on the park's iconic riverboat for 30 minutes. It was perched up at center field, where it then zoomed down center field, then eventually flew off down the right-field line on top of the Fox Sports Ohio Club. It then proceeded to get into a brawl with a smaller hawk or falcon. It was unclear which raptor had triumphed, but by noon, neither was present.

But not before the snowy owl left some presents for the grounds crew.

"There's a couple of things up in left field that look like furry sausages," Lord said. "They're 4-6 inches long."

Yes, dear reader. Like a fan overindulging with beer, the snowy owl coughed up the undigested remnants of its meals.

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They're called pellets and they're a product of owls' unique inability to pass their entire meal. Professor Kevin J. McGowan of the Cornell School of Ornithology, who examined photos taken by the grounds crew, said these pellets probably included birds, some of which might possibly have been those pesky pigeons that gather on the field.

Some Reds fans like Cracker Jacks or hot dogs.

Others prefer feathered snacks from the concession.