Wabi

It’s not the first thing I remember. The first thing was feeling surrounded by a wall that was wrapped around me. The wall had never bothered me before. I’d always felt warm and secure. But then a frantic feeling came over me. I had to get out of there. I pushed against the wall with my head, attacked it with my beak. Finally, when it seemed as if I couldn’t fight any longer, I broke through.

My brother was waiting for me on the other side. He is the second thing I remember. Unfortunately. He gave me a big shove. Then he bit me.

There wasn’t much I could do to fight back. I was really little. You wouldn’t think it to look at me now, but I was the smallest one in my family. My sister and brother were both bigger than me.

My sister never paid much attention to me. She had bigger things to worry about, namely our brother. But I learned a lot from her, just by watching. I saw how she could sidestep to keep out of my brother’s way when our mother wasn’t around. I started doing the same thing and began to avoid most of his pecks and pushes. When our mother came back, my brother ignored us. He was too interested in seeing what food she brought and making sure that he got most of it.

That was pretty much it as far as the food our mother brought to us. From the half-digested bits of yummy little critters that she coughed up when we were owlets to the nice crunchy whole mice that hung limp and delicious from her beak as we got older, my big brother always got more than my sister and me.

My sister kept her eyes open for anything else that might be dangerous. Lots of creatures like to eat little owls. She was always looking up, looking down, turning her head around. I learned to do that too. Or at least I did so when I wasn’t sidestepping as fast as I could to keep away from my big brother’s beak. The only good thing about his eating more than us was that it also meant he slept more.

Keeping very quiet and still was also something my big sister did really well, especially when the shadow of another wide-winged bird went over. Being silent is useful in other ways than avoiding the attention of a hungry hawk or crow. For one, it makes you a better listener. Listening is very, very important. When you are small, you can hear things that might eat you. When you are grown, it’s the other way around.

I’m not sure how I survived. From other owls, I’ve learned that every nest was not as bad as ours. In most nests, the chicks squabble a little around feeding time, but otherwise just live and let live. It was just my luck to have been hatched into one with an ornicidal maniac.

I remember waking up one night from a dream in which our whole tree was being shaken by a big scary wind. I was being thrown around, all right, but not by the wind. The next violent push against me made me realize two things real fast. The first, of course, was that my brother was the one shoving me. The second realization was that I had been pushed up onto the edge of the nest. I was about to fall.

I didn’t know for sure what was down there. I’d never touched the earth or seen things like grass and flowers close up. My whole world was our nest and the branches around us, the sky, and my mother’s wide wings overhead. There was also, every now and then, another presence in the high branches of the tree some distance from ours. It wasn’t threatening, like the crows our mother warned us about.

“Black-wings come in, they eat you then,” was what she said. Things that wanted to devour tender little owlets made up a good part of her conversations. “Don’t get eaten,” was the only advice she ever gave us.

But even though that distant presence seemed to me to be another owl rather than a crow, it never came close to feed us the way our mother did.

At the moment when my brother had shoved me to the very edge of our nest, I didn’t think about that other owl. All I could think was that I was about to be pushed out.

I grabbed the side of the nest with both feet, dug my claws in hard, and shoved back at my brother. To my surprise, he yelped and went rolling into the center of the nest. He landed on his back and stayed there, threatening me with his claws.

I ignored him as I hopped down to safety. Even though I was small, I was tougher than I’d thought. Was I stronger than my big brother? It was an interesting thought. All the rest of that day he didn’t push me or nip me even once. He clacked his beak a time or two, but I could live with that. Especially as opposed to being pushed out to fall to what I suspected was certain death below. Foxes, weasels, wolverines, wolves, minks, fishers, bears, snakes. Our mother had mentioned all of them as well as a few more creatures that were even larger, scarier, and just as likely to view a little owl as a nice snack in between bigger meals. “Monsters,” she said. “They want to eat you.”

The thought of being strong enough to actually defend myself made me feel self-confident. I wasn’t used to feeling confident. Hungry, uncertain, wary, confused, disappointed, and bruised, yes. But not confident.

It turned out that being confident was not as good a thing as I thought. I felt so self-confident that I stopped watching my brother as closely as I had been. Instead, when my mother fed us the next day, I hopped forward, beak open, and got a limp fat mouse all to myself. As I gulped it down, I watched her spread her wings and float into flight. It looked easy. I’d never thought about being able to fly before. I hopped over to the edge of the nest and peered up as she sailed away.

I could do that someday, I thought, extending one wing to look at it. My feathers had been growing in nicely. Not one bit of yellow fluff was left.

My brother had seen his chance. My feet grabbed at the small sticks that edged our nest, but I was too late. I had been pushed right out. I was falling.