In contrast to the tiny burrowing owls, which represent nature, the massive bulldozers at the future site of a Mother Paula’s pancake house symbolize corporate greed and human development. Throughout Hoot, the bulldozers and other earthmoving machinery sits at the construction site, silent, unused, and ominous—a sign of what’s to come when Curly is finally able to move forward and break ground. Their capacity to destroy the natural world is clear; they are, as Curly and Chuck Muckle discuss, the first tools that will begin transforming a wild, untamed lot into a suburban chain restaurant. The narrative often highlights their potential to destroy the natural world by comparing them to the tiny burrowing owls that the bulldozers will displace, if the Mother Paula’s corporation has its way. Roy and even Officer Delinko are struck by how tiny and helpless the owls look when they perch on the massive machinery. And the novel again highlights the machines’ massive size and capacity for destruction when it describes Roy, Beatrice, and Mullet Fingers—all preteens—sitting in the bulldozer’s bucket. Even as humans, they too seem tiny and inconsequential next to something as large as a backhoe.
However, Hoot also makes the case that the bulldozer itself (and the greed and development it represents) isn’t infallible. Mullet Fingers is able to stall the construction project for several weeks by pulling up survey stakes, highlighting that the bulldozer and its operator can’t actually develop the property without an obvious plan or map. And when Mullet Fingers later removes the earthmovers’ seats, it becomes extremely clear that the machines on their own are useless—it’s essential that human operators be able to sit and drive the equipment. When Roy and his friends are ultimately able to stop the construction project altogether, their victory stands as a final insistence that corporate greed isn’t all-powerful. When people like Roy stand up for what they believe in and make a fuss, they can, in fact, successfully push back.
Bulldozers Quotes in Hoot
“Mr. Branitt, there’s one more thing I wanted to ask. I’m just curious.”
“Fire away,” said Curly, wiping his brow with a yellow bandanna.
“It’s about those owls.”
“Sure.”
“What’s gonna happen to them?” Officer Delinko asked. “Once you start bulldozing, I mean.”
Curly the foreman chuckled. He thought the policeman must be kidding.
“What owls?” he said.
“Them cottonmouths can kill a person,” Curly said.
“Really. Can they kill a bulldozer, too?”
“Well... probably not.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
Curly sighed. “Yes, sir. First thing Monday morning.”
“Music to my ears,” Chuck Muckle said.
Roy trailed him back to the bulldozer, where Beatrice remained perched on the blade, cleaning her eyeglasses.
[...]
Mullet Fingers tapped him on the arm. “Listen.”
Roy heard a short high-pitched coo-coo. Then, from across the open lot, came another. Beatrice’s stepbrother rose stealthily, tugged off his new sneakers, and crept forward. Roy followed closely.
The boy was grinning through his fever when he signaled for them to stop. “Look!”
“Wow,” Roy said, under his breath.
There, standing by the hole and peering curiously at one of the meatballs, was the smallest owl that he had ever seen.
Mullet Fingers chucked him gently on the shoulder. “Okay—now do you get it?”
“Yeah,” said Roy. “I get it.”
“They’ve probably got all the necessary paperwork and permits.”
“They’ve got permits to bury owls?” Roy asked in disbelief.
“The owls will fly away. They’ll find new dens somewhere else.”
“What if they’ve got babies? How will the baby birds fly away?” Roy shot back angrily. “How, Dad?”
“I don’t know,” his father admitted.
“How would you and Mom like it,” Roy pressed on, “if a bunch of strangers showed up one day with bulldozers to flatten this house? And all they had to say was ‘Don’t worry, Mr. and Mrs. Eberhardt, it’s no big deal. Just pack up and move to another place.’ How would you feel about that?”
In addition to a fear of getting caught, Roy had serious qualms about trying anything illegal—and there was no dodging the fact that vandalism was a crime, however noble the cause.
Yet he couldn’t stop thinking ahead to the day when the owl dens would be destroyed by bulldozers. He could picture the mother owls and father owls, helplessly flying in circles while their babies were being smothered under tons of dirt.
It made Roy sad and angry. So what if Mother Paula’s had all the proper permits? Just because something was legal didn’t automatically make it right.
The driver’s seat was gone!
Dropping the rock that he’d been carrying for protection, Curly dashed to the next machine in line, a backhoe. Its seat had disappeared, too.
In a snit, Curly stomped toward the third and last piece of equipment, a grader. Again, no driver’s seat.
Curly spat out a cuss word. Without seats, the earthmoving machines were basically useless. The operators had to sit down in order to work the foot pedals and steer at the same time.
Officer Delinko had clonked directly into one of Curly’s earthmoving machines. He glared up at the steel hulk, rubbing his bruised shoulder. He didn’t notice that the seat was gone, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have given it a worry.
The policeman was grimly preoccupied with another concern. His gaze shifted from the massive bulldozer to the bird burrow, then back again.
Until that moment, Officer David Delinko had been so worried about solving the Mother Paula’s case and saving his own career that he hadn’t thought much about anything else.
Now he understood what was going to happen to the little owls if he did his job properly, and it weighted him with an aching and unshakeable sorrow.
Bulldozers Symbol Timeline in Hoot
