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Owls


“If an owl sits outside your window seven nights in a row someone in your house is going to die.”

That was told me by my grandmother, Alice Foster, when I was a child. It scared me to death. She also told me to never look at a full moon through brush or tree branches. “It’s bad luck,” she’d say.

I’ve had a bit of bad luck during my lifetime, but haven’t we all?

That moon through brush thing didn’t bother me much. I was able to shrug it off. But the owl sitting outside my window thing – now that was another story.

How does one to know if there is an owl sitting outside their window unless they hear it or look out and see it. Do people that die have owls sitting outside their homes? Could they have shoed them off and lived to see another day? Those kinds of things filtered through my mind when I was a child. Perhaps I was an overthinker.

I remember once our family came home late one summer night when the moon was full. It was a beautiful night, filled with thousands of stars in the sky. Over the gate to our front yard was a double yoke ox bow my grandfather used to haul timber from the woods on the farm. The gate and yoke were painted white and shone brightly in the moonlight that night. Beside them was a large oak tree, and in the light of the moon we saw a large owl watching as we approached.

My father pointed it out to us. I wish he hadn’t done that. I froze in my tracks, remembering what Momma Foster had told me. I wondered if that was the only time that owl had sat outside our home? Was that the first of seven nights? The fourth? The sixth?

Before we went through the gate that owl lifted off the limb it was perched on and disappeared into the darkness. Needless to say, I had trouble falling asleep that night. Was someone in our house going to die? Would it be me?

These days I take Spanky out for his last bathroom break of the day before I go to bed. I’ve grown to enjoy it. On clear nights I get to see the stars and moon overhead while he sniffs out the perfect spot to do his duty. Over the course of the last three years he and I have done this ritual I’ve witnessed the changes in the night sky as one season changes to the next. Orion’s Belt is only visible at certain times during the year. The big dipper also moves across the sky with the changing of seasons.

Also, there are things out there in the dark that make your hair stand on end. Coyotes are one. Bats are another. Then there are the whippoorwills. I love to hear them. It reminds me of nights spent on our front porch when I was a kid.

And lastly there are the owls. There is a scope of woods to the south of our home where I can usually hear a loud one calling. In the distance to the north I sometimes hear another replying back. I’m no longer afraid of them like I was as a child. I’ve grown to enjoy hearing them communicate before I retire for the night.

Tina has told me, more than once lately, that she has heard an owl in our backyard early in the morning. “It sounds like it is right outside the back door!”

She’s an early riser. I’m not. The other morning, I had to get up earlier than normal to drive down to Nashville. She had already walked Spanky in the dark, and when she came inside, she said, “I heard the owl again. It was close!”

Hmmmm. “How close?”

“Real close. Like in the birch tree close.”

“That’s close,” I said.

I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking my coffee when something caught my eye through our glass backdoor. Two owls settled down on the neighbor’s rooftop next door. One didn’t stay long before flying away. The other just sat there, silhouetted against the dawning sky. I wondered if it was watching me.

“Come quickly, Tina! The owls are here.”

She rushed into the kitchen and managed to snap a picture before the last one lifted off the roof and flew north.

I thought about what my grandmother had told me as a child. Whoooooo knows how long those owls have been visiting us. Then I finished my coffee. I had things to do, places to go, promises to keep, and miles to go before I would once again sleep.

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Rick Algood
October 8, 2019

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