And what's the point of a baby owl?

A friend sent me a photo she took of a baby owl. Cute! Man, you don't know cute 'til you see a baby owl. Owlet, technically. Isn't that even a cuter than cute name? So now I'm all hot to hike out and sneak up and try to see the owlet and his momma. If I'm really quiet, she won't swoop down and peck out my eyeballs. I know this because once before in my life I had a glimpse of owlets, way way up in a cottonwood tree. (Never mind the technical name for cottonwood.) We could quietly (QUIETLY!!) sneak up beneath the tree, actually quite far back otherwise we couldn't see far enough up due to the perspective if you grasp my meaning, and watch the momma bring snacks in for the wee ones. Then they got big enough so we could see their fuzzy heads above the messy nest. If we were patient and QUIET! . But if we got too close (and I mean, too close was like a hundred feet away, since we were not only below but back from the tree), I say, if we got TOO close, that momma owl HISSED at us! Holy crow! This loud, growly kinda deep ZZZing hiss. Her head and big yellow eyes and gigantic beak would swivel. Following us like the bizarre eyes of an ancient painting. One more step forward....SNAP!! Her beak would begin to clack and she'd puff up her feathers, begin stepping from foot to foot (we could see her sort of rocking side to side), hunch up her shoulders and holy........sugar we'd step back double quick. We knew without question Momma was just about to swoop down and peck our eyeballs out of our heads, leaving streaming, bloody holes. Oh yeah. No messin' with THOSE babies. So the next thing on my mind is, what's up with all these photos of people's babies on Facebook? Ya know, some of the sites even have the address of the nest on them, man. The town, the street name perhaps. The predators (or potential enemies) getting closet and closer to the nest, maybe at first not meaning harm, but maybe attracting other predators and next thing you know, BAM! The tree's down, the nest is violated, and those owlets (kidlets?) are snatched and gone. Too late for momma to hiss and growl now. Maybe she shoulda protected the nest better. Maybe she should have hid the nest in the forest, not hung it out on the edge of the woods, with babies in full view. Our owlets survived because we never told anyone else about them. We quietly watched them a few times a week, from a distance, and we never tried to tame them or touch them. We never taught them to think the world is a safe place for owlets to roam, or that people are safe to play with. Where are your owlets tonight?