Owls in the Family (2 page)

chapter 2

The reason Dad said: “Oh NO! Not owls too” was because I already had some pets.

There was a summerhouse in our back yard and we kept about thirty gophers in it. They belonged to Bruce and me, and to another boy called Murray. We caught them out on the prairie, using snares made of heavy twine.

The way you do it is like this: You walk along until you spot a gopher sitting up beside his hole. Gophers sit straight up, reaching their noses as high as they can, so they can see farther. When you begin to get too close they flick their tails, give a little jump, and whisk down their holes. As soon as they do that, you take a piece of twine that has a noose tied in one end, and you spread the noose over the hole. Then you lie down in the grass holding the other end of the twine in your hand. You can hear the gopher all the while, whistling away to himself somewhere underground. He can hear you, too, and he’s wondering what you’re up to.

After a while he gets so curious he can’t stand it. Out pops his head, and you give a yank on the twine. You have to haul in fast, because if the twine gets loose he’ll slip his head out of the noose and zip back down his hole.

We had rats too. Murray’s dad was a professor at the university and he got us some white rats from the medical school. We kept them in our garage, which made my Dad a little peeved, because he couldn’t put the car in the garage for fear the rats would make nests inside the seats. Nobody ever knew how many rats we had because they have so many babies, and they have them so fast. We gave white rats away to all the kids in Saskatoon, but we always seemed to end up with as many as we had at first.

There were the rats and gophers, and then there was a big cardboard box full of garter snakes that we kept under the back porch, because my mother wouldn’t let me keep them in the house. Then there were the pigeons. I usually had about ten of them, but they kept bringing their friends and relations for visits, so I never knew how many to expect when I went out to feed them in the mornings. There were some rabbits too, and then there was Mutt, my dog—but he wasn’t a pet; he was one of the family.

Sunday morning my father said:

“Billy, I think you have enough pets. I don’t think you’d
better bring home any owls. In any case, the owls might eat your rats and rabbits and gophers….”

He stopped talking and a queer look came into his face. Then he said:

“On second thought—maybe we
need
an owl around this place!”

So it was all right.

Sunday afternoon Bruce and I met Mr. Miller at his house. He was a big man with a bald head. He wore short pants and carried a great big haversack full of cameras and films. He was excited about the owl’s-nest, all right, and he was in such a hurry to get to it that Bruce and I had to run most of the way, just to keep up with him.

When we reached the edge of the Owl Bluff Mr. Miller got out his biggest camera and, after he had fussed with it for about half an hour, he said he was ready.

“We’ll walk Indian file, boys,” he said, “and quiet as mice. Tiptoe…Musn’t scare the owl away.”

Well, that sounded all right, only you can’t walk quietly in a poplar bluff because of all the dead sticks underfoot. They crack and pop like firecrackers. Under Mr. Miller’s feet they sounded like cannon shots. Anyway, when we got to the nest tree there was no sign of the owl.

“Are you sure this IS an owl’s-nest?” Mr. Miller asked us.

“Yes, sir!” Bruce answered. “We seen the owl setting on it!”

Mr. Miller shuddered. “
Saw
the owl
sitting
on it, Bruce.…Hmmm…. Well—I suppose I’d better climb up and take a peek. But if you ask me, I think it’s just an old crow’s-nest.”

He put down his big haversack and the camera, and up he went. He was wearing a big floppy hat to keep his head from getting sunburned and I don’t think he could see out from under it very well.

“Boy, has he got knobby knees!” Bruce whispered to me. We both started to giggle and we were still giggling when Mr. Miller began to shout.

“Hoyee!” he yelled. “SCAT—WHOEEE! Hoy, HOY!”

Bruce and I ran around the other side of the tree so we could see up to the nest. Mr. Miller was hanging onto the tree with both arms and he was kicking out with his feet. It looked as if his feet had slipped off the branch and couldn’t find a place to get hold of again. Just then there was a swooshing sound and the old owl came diving down right on top of him with her wings spread wide. She looked as
big as a house and she didn’t miss Mr. Miller by more than an inch. Then she swooped up and away again.

Mr. Miller was yelling some strange things, and good and loud too. He finally got one foot back on a branch but he was in such a hurry to get down that he picked too small a branch. It broke, and he slid about five feet before his belt caught on a stub. While he was trying to get loose, the owl came back for another try. This time she was so close that we could see her big yellow eyes, and both Bruce and I ducked. She had her claws stuck way out in front of her. Just as she dived toward him, Mr. Miller, who couldn’t see her coming because of his hat, gave a jump upward to get free of the stub. The result was that the owl couldn’t miss him even if she wanted to. There was an awful flapping and yelling and then away went the owl, with Mr. Miller’s hat.

I don’t think she really wanted that old hat. It was all Mr. Miller’s fault for jumping at the wrong time. The owl seemed to be trying to shake the hat loose from her claws, but she couldn’t because her claws were hooked in it. The last we saw of her she was flying out over the prairie and she still had the hat.

When Mr. Miller got down out of the tree he went right to his haversack. He took out a bottle, opened it, and started to drink. His Adam’s apple was going in and out like an accordion. After a while he put down the bottle and wiped
his mouth. When he saw us staring at him he tried to smile.

“Cold tea,” he explained. “Thirsty work—climbing trees in this hot weather.”

“It was an owl’s-nest, wasn’t it, sir?” asked Bruce.

Mr. Miller looked at him hard for a moment. Then:

“Yes, Bruce,” he said. “I guess it was.”

There was one thing about Mr. Miller. You couldn’t stop him for long. Now he explained to us that it was probably a bad thing to climb to the nest because it would disturb the owls too much. He had a better idea. He took a hatchet out of his haversack and we set to work building something that he called a “blind.” What this was, really, was a little tent fixed on a platform of sticks high up in another tree, but close to the owl tree.

It took a couple of hours to build the blind. Bruce and I went scrounging for pieces of wood and, when we brought them back, Mr. Miller hauled them up the chosen tree with a rope and nailed them into place. When he had a platform built he hauled up the tent. The tent had a round hole, about as big as your fist, in the front of it. That was for the camera. According to Mr. Miller, you could hide in the blind and stay there until the owl thought everything was safe. Then, when the owl came back to her nest, you could
take all the pictures you wanted and she would never even know about it.

“He sure must think owls are dumb,” Bruce muttered to me when Mr. Miller wasn’t near. “She may not see him, but she could see that tent if her eyes were tight shut; and I don’t think she’s going to like it.”

When the blind was finished, Mr. Miller said he was ready to try it.

“You boys go off for a walk,” he told us. “Make a lot of noise when you’re leaving. The books say birds can’t count—so the owl will think all three of us have gone and she’ll never guess I’ve stayed up here in the blind.”

“Okay, Mr. Miller,” I said. “C’mon, Brucie, let’s get going.”

We walked about a mile away to a little slough and started looking for red-winged blackbirds’-nests. It was another nice day and we forgot about Mr. Miller until we began to get hungry. Then we went back to the bluff.

Mr. Miller was on the ground. He had just finished the rest of his cold tea, but he didn’t look the least bit well. His face was awfully white, and his hands were shaking as he tried to put his camera away. The camera looked as if it had fallen out of a tree. It was all scratched, and covered with dirt.

“Get some good pictures, sir?” I asked him cheerfully.

“No, I didn’t,” Mr. Miller said—and it was a sort of snarl. “But I’ll tell you one thing. Any blame fool who says owls can’t count is a liar!”

On the way home Mr. Miller finally told us what had happened.

About an hour after we went walking, the owl came back. She lit on her nest and then she turned around and took a good long look at the little tent, which was on a level with her, and only about six feet away.

Mr. Miller was busy inside the tent focusing his camera and getting ready to take the owl’s picture, when she asked: “Who-WHO-OO-who-WHO-OO?”—and took one leap.

The next thing Mr. Miller knew the front was ripped right out of the tent and the owl was looking him in the eye from about a foot away.

Mr. Miller accidentally dropped his camera; and then of course he had to hurry down to see if it was all right. And that was when we got back to the bluff.

I guess it wasn’t a very good day for Mr. Miller, but it wasn’t too bad for us. Mr. Miller said he had seen three young owls in the nest and he thought they were about halfway grown, which meant they were about the right age to take home for pets.

All we had to do now was to figure some way to get hold of them.

Chapter 3

The next week seemed awfully long. The only time I really hated school was during the springtime—particularly in May when the birds were busy nesting on the prairies. This May week, what with thinking about the owls, and sitting by the open window sniffing the smells of springtime, I wished school had never been invented.

Every recess, and after school, Murray and Bruce and I talked about the young owls and tried to think of ways to get them out of their nest. Murray suggested we should cut down the tree; but that was too dangerous because the young owls might be hurt. Bruce said he might get his father to come and shoot the old owl so it would be safe for us to climb the tree; but that wasn’t fair.

The only thing I could think of was firecrackers. My idea was to get some small skyrockets and let them off under the nest to scare the mother owl away. The trouble was that we had no money and, anyway, the storekeepers wouldn’t sell skyrockets to kids our age.

Then, on Friday night, we had a storm of the kind called a “chinook.” Chinooks come down out of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta and sometimes they blow right across Saskatchewan—and they blow like fury. Lying in my bed on Friday night I could hear branches snapping off the poplar trees along the riverbank. The rain was pelting on the roof so hard that it scared Mutt (who always slept on my bed) and made him howl. I had to pull a quilt over his head to make him keep quiet. He hated storms. I worried about the young owls for a long time before I finally fell asleep.

Early on Saturday morning Murray called for me and we met Bruce at the Railroad Bridge. It was a fine morning and the sun kept popping in and out between the white clouds that were racing across the sky trying to catch up to the chinook. Everything was steaming from all the rain, and the prairie was soggy wet.

We hurried across the fields and didn’t care if our feet did get soaked, because we were worried about the owls. When we were still quite a way from Owl Bluff, Bruce gave a shout:

“Lookee!” he yelled. “Old Miller’s blind is gone!”

Sure enough, six or seven of the biggest cottonwoods were snapped right off at the tops and, as for Mr. Miller’s blind, it had been blown clean out of its tree and nobody ever did
find it again. But the worst thing was the owl’s-nest. The rain and wind had smashed it to pieces, and all that was left was a stick or two stuck in the crotch where the nest had been.

There was no sign of the old owls at all; but on the ground near the foot of the tree were two young owls—and they were cold and dead. They were so young they had grown only about half their feathers, and baby-down was still sticking to them all over. I don’t know whether they were killed by the fall, or not; but they were as wet as sponges and I think they probably died from being so wet and cold all night long.

We felt as miserable as could be, and all we could think of to do was to have a funeral for the little owls. Bruce had his jackknife with him and he started to dig a grave while Murray and I went looking for the right kind of sticks to use for crosses. There was a big pile of brush nearby, and I happened to give it a kick in passing. Something went
snap-snap-snap
from under it. I shoved my hand under the brush and touched a bundle of wet feathers.

Bruce and Murray came over and we pulled the brush away. There was the missing owlet, the third one that had been in the nest, and he was still alive.

He was bigger than the other two, and that was probably
because he was the first one hatched. Horned owls are funny that way. They begin to lay their eggs in March when it’s still winter on the prairie. The eggs are laid a few days apart, but from the time the first one is laid, the mother has to start “setting.” If she waited until she had a full clutch of eggs, the early ones would be chilled and would never hatch. The first egg that’s laid hatches first, and that young owl gets a four-or five-day head start on the next one who, in turn, gets a head start on the next one.

The one we found must have been the first to hatch because he not only was bigger than the others but must have been a lot stronger too. When the nest blew apart, and he fell to the ground, he was able to wiggle under the brush pile for shelter, and that probably saved his life.

He was about as big as a chicken, and you could see his grown-up feathers pushing through the baby-down. He even had the beginnings of the two “horn” feathers growing on his head. A surprising thing about him was that he was almost pure white, with only small black markings on the ends of his feathers. When we found him he looked completely miserable, because all his down and feathers were stuck together in clumps, and he was shivering like a leaf.

I thought he would be too miserable to feel like fighting,
but when I tried to pick him up he hunched forward, spread his wings, and hissed at me. It was a good try, but he was too weak to keep it up, and he fell right over on his face.

I was still a little bit afraid of him, because his claws were long and sharp, and his beak—which he kept snapping—seemed big enough to bite off my finger. But he did look so wet and sad that after a while I stopped being afraid. I got down on my knees in front of him and, very slowly, put my hand on his back. He hunched down as if he thought I was going to hurt him, but when I didn’t hurt, he stopped hissing and lay still. He felt as cold as ice. I took off my shirt and put it over him, and then I picked him up as carefully as I could and carried him out of the bluff so he could sit in the sunshine and get dry and warm again.

It was surprising how fast he started to get better. In half an hour his feathers were dry and he was standing up and looking around him. Murray had brought along some roast-beef sandwiches for lunch. He took some meat out of the sandwiches and held it out to the owl. The owl looked at him a minute, with its head on one side, then it gave a funny little hop and came close enough to snatch the meat out of Murray’s fingers. It gave a couple of gulps, blinked its eyes once, and the meat was gone.

He was certainly a hungry owl! He ate all the meat we
had, and most of the bread as well. When I found some dead mice that his mother must have left on the edge of the nest, and which had also been blown to the ground, the owl ate them too. They must have been hard to swallow, because he ate them whole. But he got them down somehow.

After that we were friends. When Bruce and I started to walk away from him, just to see what he would do, the owl followed right along behind us like a dog. He couldn’t fly,
of course; and he couldn’t walk any too well either. He kind of jumped along, but he stayed right with us all the same. I think he knew he was an orphan, and that if he stayed with us we’d look after him.

When I sat down again, he came up beside me and, after taking a sideways look into my face, he hopped up on my leg. I was afraid his claws would go right through my skin, but they didn’t hurt at all. He was being very careful.

“Guess he’s your owl, all right,” Bruce said, and I could see he was a little jealous.

“No, sir, Bruce,” I replied. “He can live at my place, but he’s going to be our owl—all three of us.”

We left him sitting in the sun by the haversacks and then we buried the other two little owls and had a funeral over them. After that we were ready to go home.

We decided the best way to carry our new pet was to put him in my haversack. He didn’t like it much, but after a struggle we managed to stuff him into it. We left his head sticking out so he could see where he was going.

Mutt and Bruce’s dog, Rex, hadn’t been with us that morning. I think the two of them had gone off cat-hunting before we got up. But as we were walking along the sidewalk in front of my house, we met old Mutt coming back from wherever he had been.

Mutt was cross-eyed and shortsighted, and so he never could see any too well. He came up to me to say hello, wagging his long tail and sniffing me—and then suddenly he smelled owl. I don’t think he knew exactly what it was he smelled, because he had never been close to an owl before. But he knew he smelled something strange. I stood there trying not to laugh while he sniffed all around me. He snuffed my trousers and then he began to sniff the haversack. When his nose was nearly in the owl’s face, the bird opened its beak and snapped it shut again right on the end of poor old Mutt’s black nose. Mutt gave a yelp you could have heard a mile away, and went loping off to hide his hurt feelings under the garage.

We put the owl in the summerhouse and when Dad got home from work the owl was sitting on an orange crate watching the gophers running around on the floor below him. It kept him busy. His head kept turning one way and then the other until it looked as if he were going to unscrew it right off his shoulders. He didn’t know what to make of the gophers, because he had never seen a live one before. But he was certainly interested in them.

“Better count your gophers, Billy,” said my father. “I have an idea they may start disappearing. By the way, what do you call your owl?”

I hadn’t thought of any name for him up until that moment, but now one just popped into my head. I remembered Christopher Robin’s owl in
Winnie-the-Pooh
.

“His name is Wol,” I said.

And Wol he was, forever after.