"An Owl," or "The Owl"?

In the week before we found out about the loss of our third child, an exceptionally large owl made a nightly habit of perching on top of the utility pole in the eastern corner of our backyard. I say exceptionally large as though I have the proper frame of reference to make the declaration: I don’t. In my wanderings before settling down with my good wife at the turn of the millennium, I’d seen my share of birds of prey: bald eagles wheeling in thermals above the Mississippi; hawks parked on light posts, barn peaks, and telephone poles along pathways, two-lanes, four-lanes, eight-lanes, and railways; and then there was that strange collection of barn owls in the tree at my aunt’s house in the Dakotas when I was a kid, but that too was in the sunlight, gray and waning though it was. But when it comes to large nocturnal birds, my first-hand experience has been for the most part mute. Exceptional or not, it certainly cast a formidable shadow against the December snow and brittle moonlight surrounding our quiet house.


Not that I saw it clearly. In fact, I first heard it. I’d gone out to the garage to throw an empty milk jug in the recycle bin, check the oil in the Honda, and shoehorn a stray pair of diagonal cut pliers into the infuriatingly overpopulated top drawer of my toolbox. I was out there long enough to justify firing up the Emerson CD player I keep there for such occasions. Just as Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” was fading, I heard an oddly familiar sound somehow seeping in from around the insulated door. It was baffling at first: Unmistakable, familiar, but exotic. Oddly, it would take several solid, still minutes for the image to resolve in my mind’s ear: the textbook baritone who-whoing of an owl. It was quietly startling: Loud enough to be heard through the insulated garage door and above the opening strains of Wilco’s “Misunderstood”; loud enough to make me send out a nervous, mumbled prayer. When that strange more-curious-than-scared feeling finally took hold, I opened the garage door and stood in the driveway. My brain at last having cataloged the sound as that of a very loud owl, I began trying to figure the bird’s location.


My immediate impression was that the sound was coming from somewhere directly above me: maybe the neighbor’s maple, maybe even the rooftop. But as I slowly ranged around the driveway with my face bent to the ground and my ears straining — the neighbors no doubt curious but sadly not surprised — the sound seemed to envelop the whole of the property. It came from everywhere. But somehow, under the open winter sky, it was still close and warm. Slowly, I crept along the front of the house, until it became obvious that the owl was somewhere in the back. For a while, I thought it might be in yet another neighbor’s tree, but by the time I’d made it past our oldest son’s bedroom window it was clear: The owl was in our backyard, overlooking the house. Every twenty seconds or so: “who … who-who-who.” I crept closer. I walked the way I imagined ninjas would: toes-first in the snow, heel down gently … pause … listen … repeat. Of course, the owl was watching me the entire time, as it turns out. Just as I got close enough to make out its massive outline against the stars, it leapt up off the utility pole, generated lift with its massive wings, and sped off to a treetop two houses down. I could still see its silhouette. I was struck by how few wing beats it took for it to clear the distance: ground that would have winded me at a slow trot. It regarded me, unconcerned. It wasn’t afraid. It wasn’t nervous. I hadn’t startled it or scared it off. By the time I made it back to the garage, it was clearly back on its perch on top of the utility pole.


It was just an owl. A great horned owl, as it turns out — common all across the state, all across the country, all across the continent. How I managed to pass four decades alive on the planet without ever encountering one is apparently a miracle in and of itself. And yet there was something very strange about that owl. For the next two nights, it would stay close to the house: sometimes perched on that utility pole in the eastern corner; sometimes in the neighbor’s maple tree next door; sometimes — possibly — on our other neighbor’s rooftop. We all heard it, even inside the house with the TV on, or with the kids dancing to Johnny Cash singing “Wabash Cannonball” on the stereo in the living room, or with battle droids and X-wings making war up and down the hallway. On the night of the owl’s discovery, the kids had been in bed. In the morning when I told him about the owl, Sam’s face broke out in a big toothy grin. He looked the way I felt about the owl. I was so thrilled about having an owl around the house; everything about it made me smile — the constant who-whoing in the near-Christmas nights; the thought of this bird being for some reason drawn to our property; the way the kids jumped up and down when they heard it; the way my wife found my amusement to be so amusing. The owl gave me such a clear sense of love for this home we’d been given. I thought about our new baby and was happy to have to make room for him or her.


The last night we had the owl, my wife bundled up Sam in his winter coat and boots before bedtime, and I led him quietly out the front door and around the side of the house. His feet were a whisper on the snow. We stood beneath the branches of the tree in back and watched the owl for a long time. Sam crept closer and closer, so carefully it nearly broke my heart. I whispered, “don’t scare him away,” and he nodded, but he also kept creeping. Oddly, the owl stayed put, even as Sam stepped out of the branch-shadows and into a patch of moonlight. Sam stood for a moment, and then raised a mitten-clad hand, and waved vigorously at the owl. The owl who-whoed. Sam crept carefully back to my side. We stood a little longer, until something strange happened: The owl’s who-whoing stopped completely, and the yard fell silent. The three of us stood in the quiet, with just the gentle “tick-ticking” of dry twigs scraping against each other in the breeze, the fabric of my coat sleeve sliding along the fabric of Sam’s, cars gliding by on Manhattan road, and somewhere in the distance a wind chime. Sam tugged on my coat sleeve: “it’s time to go,” he said. We made our way, ninja-stepping, back to the side of the house. Sam paused for a moment and turned back: “Bye owl, I love you.” Deep in the night, Liz woke me up: “Kevin, listen.” The owl was who-whoing again. We lay there together, listening. That was it. That was the last we saw or heard from our owl. A week later, we would find out that our baby’s heart stopped beating on one of those days or nights over the owl’s time with us.


It’s taken me a long time to write this down, because the owl’s visit has turned into something more to me than its surface would imply. I would hate to ascribe some sort of supernatural significance to what may turn out to be nothing more than our yard’s particularly fertile field-mouse supply. But I do know this much: I have looked back to the owl’s visit with an odd sense of comfort many times in this difficult time, and it’s been a source of affirmation to me about the strength and safety of this home and this family. I also know that my normally nervous Sam seemed awfully familiar around that owl. And I’ve read enough about great horned owls to understand that they’re territorial, they have no known predators, and they nest in early winter. That owl is gone, and there is no nest to be found in our yard or neighboring yards — I’ve checked. Do I think the owl was an escort, sent to protect our baby’s soul from the dangers of the night as he or she crossed over into heaven? Well, no. On the other hand, I do believe God knows that I’d imagine just such a thing, and that I’d find comfort in that image. And if that was all that was happening in those nights — if it was merely the miracle of God giving peace through the timely appearance of an owl in my yard for a few nights — that’s miracle enough. On the other hand, if it was more than that — if it was some sort of angel in owl form, or an owl made to camp about our house for three nights for reasons unknown and bewildering to it, or to act oddly familiar and conversant with my oldest son — that’s no more surprising. In the end, I’m left with trying to convey the humor in a punchline that’s only funny to those who hear it first-hand.