The Facts
Fact or fiction? Live owls, once Rice’s mascots, lived at Lovett College.
Fact: Rice owned two owls as mascots as late as 1991, and they lived in a tree in the Lovett quad. Of the last pair, one flew off and the other died. More stringent government regulations regarding the care of wild and endangered animals made it too difficult and expensive to replace the owls, so Rice found another solution. Instead of returning to the large stuffed version of Sammy, such as the one that had been stolen by A&M students, Rice simply stuffed a student into a costume, thus retaining a live mascot while successfully circumventing government regulations.
