What a day! I flap around my nest, landing on each perch, letting the place know I’m an owl who flew through the woods and didn’t die. I flew past a squirrel’s nest—didn’t even flinch. Of course, the squirrel didn’t come out of the nest, but the important thing to note is the Not Flinching. I even heard a crow somewhere off to the south and didn’t fall out of the air with fright.
The Brown Frizz was very sneaky to try out this new hunting technique. Just throwing me into the woods and then hiding in the leaves. Like I couldn’t hear her snuffling, let alone the pounding of her heart. But I got the message. She was testing me. And just wait until tomorrow when I hock up my pellet. She’ll see the two voles I caught all by myself. HA!
The Brown Frizz appears outside my nest as if called.
“Brown Frizz!” I screech. “Did you see me? I know you were hiding, but please, there is no hiding from a great horned owl. So you definitely should have looked up at me because I FLEW, weaving through the branches and perching and diving, and I caught two voles! All by myself, no help needed!”
The Brown Frizz does not seem to be catching on with the Good Feelings in my hoots. She slumps against the wall of my nest and slides like a slug to the dirt. She starts grumbling in Furless Creature–ese.
I land on my mute rock, which is the closest perch to her head. “Brown Frizz, there is no reason to be sulking like a frog in a drought. Focus on the exceptional, exhilarating events of the day. I FLEW!”
The Brown Frizz merely continues her grumbling. She sticks a wing-toe in through the web and I nibble it, trying to get her to scrunch up her beakless maw, which she does, and there’s the slightest hint of Good Feelings.
“That’s a good furless creature,” I chirp.
She cracks open the web on my nest and crawls inside. I don’t mind her coming in, especially on a day like today. She curls up against the wall and continues grumbling. I flap over and perch on her knee.
“Brown Frizz, you are acting like a fly in a web. There is no sense to this moping. You’re not giving off nearly the quantity of Good Feelings I would have expected after such a successful test.”
She runs her wing-toe over my breastbone, and I fluff my feathers and chirrup at her. I lean in and give her a good nip on the head fur. She chuckles and gives me a nice rub between the ear tufts, which feels quite lovely. I nip at her wing-toes when she looks like she’s thinking of stopping such nice rubbings.
We stay there for quite some time, her giving me some excellent rubbings and me giving her some excellent instruction with my beak and talons as to where to rub. But then her beakless maw stretches wide and she sucks in a great gulp of air, and I can see she’s half-asleep already.
“You should head back to your nest,” I hoot to her.
She hoots back—terribly. She’s forgotten everything I taught her.
“Rest up,” I hoot to her as she crosses the perch meadow. “There will be more excellent flying tomorrow!” Just hooting about it again brings back the buzz of excitement to my gizzard.
I fly up to my sleeping perch and give myself a bit of a groom. My feathers are more ruffled than normal, what with all the flying OUT IN THE WILD LIKE A REAL OWL.
I can’t keep from hooting softly about it. What a day, WHAT A DAY!
“You’re a half dud of a hatchling,” Red squawks. She’s giving me the Hawk Eye from her perch.
“Shut your beak,” I hoot. “I am an owl who can hunt in the woods.”
“So what are you doing back here?”
I am on the brink of becoming completely fluffed. “I live here.”
“No!” she screeches, flapping and footing her perch. “You live out there. You are a wild bird.”
That’s it. Fluffed, I am. “OBVIOUSLY!”
“So I ask again, what are you doing back in here?”
My feathers are all out of sorts. I’m practically buzzing with all the hoots I’m holding in. “As I just chirped,” I say, beak clamped shut to keep from screeching uncontrollably, “I. Live. Here.”
“You are most definitely a half dud.” Red flaps out of the opening and into another part of her nest.
That’s it. “YOU BEAK-IN-YOUR-BUTT BIRD! I am absolutely sick of you calling me hatchling or half dud or anything! I am a great horned owl, and if anything, you should call me MISTER-OWL-SIR-PLEASE-DON’T-EAT-ME!”
Red flits back onto the perch near the opening. “Oh, should I? Come and get me, HATCHLING.”
I launch at the opening in the wall, hitting the long, straight branches that cover it and screeching and flapping and putting on quite a terrifying show. I swoop back to my perch. Red is no longer in the opening.
That should shut her beak.
She swoops back to where she’d been, completely unscathed, not a feather out of place. “Huh,” she tweets. “Not a very successful attack.”
Every feather on my body fluffs out. “If those branches weren’t there,” I snap.
“Exactly!” she screeches. “That’s the entire point. Those branches aren’t there out in the wild. There are no webs of branches. There’s just you and your talons and your wings and the world. And you came back here. You chose to close yourself inside this nest.”
Ah, now I’m getting my foot around her point. Which forces me to listen to the tiny hoots inside, the ones that told me to come back to this place, the ones that whispered how the woods are full of dangers. The woods are hungry for young owls with no real hunting skills. The woods are cold and unforgiving and snap down like a claw when an owl least expects it. How much better to live in a safe, warm nest with nice furless creatures who give good rubbings and feed me all the mice I can swallow.
And yet this nest is also a trap. This web is not one I can open with my own talons.
“Why haven’t you left?” I hoot to Red after a while.
Red turns away from me, runs her beak over a feather. “I can’t leave,” she chirps. “I’ve never lived in the wild. I was hatched in a nest like this one and taken from my mother as a chick. The only mother I’ve ever known is the one you call Gray Tail.” She turns back to me. “I tried once. I flew far on a hunt, soaring beyond her whistle. Spent a night out in the wild. It rained, and I got soaked on a branch. I flew under the eaves of a human nest and was attacked by a cat. It tore my wing feathers, taking a few primaries in its claws. I scrambled into the sky, flapping any which way to escape the pain. Then I was lost, and scared, and cold, and helpless. But my partner, Gray Tail, found me, crouched in a thicket of evergreens. She brought me back here. I’ve never tried to fly free again.
“But you,” she screeches. “You’ve lived out there. Your parents showed you how to live in the wild. It may be easier to live in this nest, but it’s not the real life of a bird. I failed because I never had a chance. But you. You’re choosing to fail.
“Don’t choose to be a dud like me.”
She flaps up to her sleeping perch. I tuck a foot under my breast feathers and hunker down to think. Is living with the Brown Frizz choosing to fail? Is this life really a failure? And if I leave, will the Brown Frizz be all right?
Of course the Brown Frizz will be fine. Furless creatures are not dependent on birds. Furless creatures help hurt birds . . . hurt animals of all kinds . . . help them and then set them free.
Great Beak, was that what had the Brown Frizz all fluffed tonight? That I didn’t fly away? Was today not a test but the end of everything? Was I supposed to fly off?
Wait—does that mean the furless creatures think I’m healed? I stretch my wings. There’s no pain, no tightness. I am healed. And I can hunt—I caught two voles, all on my own, out in the wild.
I’m here because I’m afraid. But I have nothing to fear.
I am a great horned owl.
Master of the night forest.
Don’t worry, Brown Frizz. I understand now. I’m sorry I misunderstood your grumbles. But you furless creatures are so confusing, what with all the very appealing nuzzling.
I am ready, Brown Frizz.
A coyote howls and its warning carries through the trees. Danger, it says.
I scrunch down inside my feathers.
Perhaps I am not yet quite completely and absolutely ready.
Maybe tomorrow.
Yes, tomorrow.
Or the next day.