DAWN IS STORMING IN, RACING a drizzly blue light across the sky. One crow unlocks the morning with a simple caw, caw, caw, caw. It sounds irritable, even for a crow call, which can scrape the ears with the likes of: I’m up, dammit. I’m up! I survived another night on this godforsaken planet! Beat that! It reminds me that a mass of crows is called a murder of crows.
As Earth rolls through shorter days, the trees twitch with young birds far from nest or knothole, some still being supported by their parents. A new red-winged blackbird lands hard in the sycamore, then does the fluff-and-quiver dance that means Feed me! Moments later its mother arrives, back-lapping into a perfect stall, holding a green tidbit in her beak. She shoves it into the fledgling’s gaping mouth.
A gray cat sits at the edge of a crescent flower bed, blending in beside a plastic owl of about the same size. The bobble-head owl was designed to scare deer away from the daylilies but a doe kicked its head off, which I believe earned her access to the flowers. Now the cat silently glides into a better position, camouflaged by leaves and shade. As a rabbit hops into view by the garden gate, the cat crouches like a sphinx and freezes, fixated. When the unsuspecting rabbit strays to within four yards of it, the cat springs into motion, bolts into the backyard, and returns a moment later, lugging the rabbit in its mouth. I gasp and the cat hears me, startled just a flinch long enough for the rabbit to squirm free and dart away with the cat in swift pursuit. Half a minute later the cat slouches back through the underbrush, empty-jawed.
A brightening. Drowsy well-fed owls will be settling in to sleep, maybe tucking nests full of chicks beneath their embracing wings. I keep wondering about the large white stain high up on a hickory, just beneath a stubby branch, a good perch for surveying the backyard. It looks like guano—bird or bat, and whatever left it was big and perched for a long time. I hope it’s an owl that settles there each night, fifty feet up, to survey the yard for its dining pleasure. I saw an eastern screech owl in silhouette one evening, sitting in the branches of a tree. I knew him by the ear tufts and bowling-bag body, but it was too dark for me in the closing rounds of dusk to make out his amber eyes. See me? He would have read every line on my face, every eyelash. I don’t know if he understood about reflection, or the removable exoskeletons of our cars, or regarded our houses as giant nests built for us by others using tree wood and unidentifiable gubbins. But I’m a big fan of owls.
I would be an owl if I could, an ule, a creature named after its sound. So I would be a howl if I could, sweet cheat of the night, who slices open the air with soft serrated wings, so silently I don’t warn dozy prey. How far can I see? An owl could read the bottom line on an eye chart from a mile off, or hear a mouse stepping on a twig seventy-five feet away. Tuning and retuning, I would be an owl with ears twin radar dishes, eyes winged binoculars. A screech owl because, though baby screechers screech, the adults make the most enchanting soft whinnying-howl. Owl of the stethoscope ears.
I’d swallow meals whole, headfirst, tumbling soft and furry down my throat to the fiery plant that compacts all the inedibles into a hard pellet. Twice a day, growing bloated and queasy, I’d stretch my neck up and forward, squeeze my stomach hard, and vomit a hairy bony nugget. Oh, I’d vomit gently, all things considered, not thrash and shake the pellet free for five minutes like other inversely constipated owls. I’d eagerly coax these dainty pukes. Not like the giant sea cucumber that hurls up its whole stomach and tosses it, literally, at the missing feet of a wall-eyed fish, then, while the distracted fish feasts, steals away, a gutless wonder but alive, soon to grow another stomach.
I’d sing of owl-puke, the pellets that pave my days with dense nuggets that offer home to fungi, beetles, and other tramps. Does it sound nicer as a fur ball? I suppose it does. But a little cat fur swallowed while grooming can’t compare to a stony wadded-up girdle of rodent, shrew, mole, gecko, and snake skeleton, mixed with beetle crackle and songbird wings and oily fur, as if for a jigsaw puzzle of a chimera, part mammal, part bird, part reptile, part insect, all tasty.
Yes, all things considered, I would be an ule with a ukelele call, a cowl of gray feathers cupping my feathered jowls, talons sharp and strong as ice hooks, parachute wings, a demisuit of down, ule-tide duels, and ingenue eyes, voodoo eyes. I would be possessed of the ultimate head swivel: upside down and around back and front again over the other shoulder. Hunting among oaks and cottonwoods and old shady maples, with broad wings outstretched and head tucked in tight, I’d flap hard and fast, rarely gliding or hovering, while listening and watching for scuffling prey in the leaf litter and lawns.
I’d sing duets with my mate during the day and be calmed by a male chorus at night, a parliament of owls. What a panoply of songs and calls! The territorial flute-and-glass-bell tune, This is my land; the chortling duet of food bringing; the descending whinnies of courtship; the Here comes the sun! and Night is falling hoots; the reassuring I’m bringing food home hoot; the happy pottering around the nest hum; the scratchy alarm call; the faint but strident begging calls of the young; the explosive Get off my land! barks uttered in flight; the throaty trills while gabbing with a mate; the defensive hoots and harangues at nest invaders; and the billboard-loud advertising song, Look no further, I’m one hell of an owl!
When frightened, I’d blend in with tree trunk or foliage, stretching my frame long, closing my eyes to slits, tightening my feathers, and standing still as old bark. In winter, I’d gobble hot meals of warm-blooded prey, and in summer cool crisp lizards, snakes, and bugs. And it goes without saying that I would marry for life, a long life of a score or two, lengthened by living in the suburbs and devouring the rat race.
I would be an owl with wide feather skirts to curtsy with when courted by bowing suitors. Oh, the formal dances of courtship, ceremonial and piquantly Oriental. First a springtime male calls, robust as all get out, and I reply, we flirt like this several times, then I see him flying in, watch him perch nearby, and begin head-bobbing and bowing deeply, repeatedly, now and then winking one eye. Ignore him and he just chases harder. Accept, and the bill kissing and mutual preening begins, with the preened one uttering soft whimperings of delight, both fine-feathered friends amused and enthused. Yes, all things considered, I would be an ule, with owl-bright eyes, creature comforts, and wide wings with down fur below to wrap my chicks in owl love.