Reincarnation as this owl — that’s what I want. Not merely to flaunt my aerial adroitness, fierce gaze, and stunning plumage. I like the idea of staying up all night and hooting from trees.
I found the video here via a journalist whose work I admire. But James Fallow‘s likening of owls to cats with wings borders on a slur, however unintended.
My closest encounter with an owl of such regal bearing came several years ago just after dusk. I stepped outside onto the back deck overlooking our small goldfish pond and there it was six feet away. More than a foot tall, the owl was perched atop the back of a tall aluminum chair. We stared at each other longer than I expected, maybe a minute, no sign of fear in its unblinking eyes. As if finally bored with our encounter, the owl slowly unfurled its wings. Next came two sounds: the ting of talons clicking against metal, then a whispered whoosh as the owl lifted off into the night.
Movement outside the bathroom window. Peering through the blinds, I see a heron atop the neighbor’s garage. It’s scoping out the goldfish in our small backyard pond. Some are so large they’re often mistaken for koi. All are oblivious to the harbinger of death gazing upon them. Read More
Tufts of white fluff drift over my goldfish pond, on the way somewhere. Escapees from a cottonwood tree perhaps, fanning out on this cloudless and cool Portland morning. Another pastoral moment deep in the city.
From my neighbors’ century-old linden tree comes an incessant chirp. Beneath the shroud of limbs, I can’t see the bird but its notes are familiar: distress.
A silent bird comes into view, a juvenile Cooper’s hawk on a thick limb. Its head bobs down then up, pauses, then resumes. Each movement frees little white feathers that join a wind-blown procession toward the pond.
Spying me, the hawk lifts off, baby bird brunch in its beak, and disappears through the green canopy.
The other bird, hidden, still chirps, each note now a lament for what’s been lost.
Our small backyard goldfish pond in Northeast Portland sparkles from its annual cleanup today. The pond is compact: eight feet across at the widest point, thirty inches deep in the deepest spot, and nine hundred gallons. Just large enough that I can zoom in on a Google satellite map and spy its blurry roundness, as if I’m watching over it from space.
The pond came with the house when we moved in nearly five years ago. But (he boasts!) I transformed it: super-duper pump and filtration system with ultraviolet light hidden discreetly away and, more important, the addition of two marsh areas and many types of aquatic plants. Wild enough in summer that a heron swooped down into the urban landscape last year and feasted on a few unsuspecting fish.
A clump of cattails wagging in the wind reminds me of my boyhood lake in Florida. Red-wing blackbirds constantly flitted in and out of Sybelia’s cattails. Their song never varied but, depending on my mood, sounded like a greeting, a question, or a lament.
I find a recording of the song online. The sound rockets me back through more than four decades. I’m deposited in Sybelia’s bath-warm waters, where scene after scene of memories play unbidden. None is more vivid than this: I’m underwater, far beneath our two Labrador retrievers, Rogue and Sadie, swimming at the surface. Seen through a lens of deep water, they move in flickering frames of film faded with age. The dogs advance nowhere, passing each other in looping arcs.
