Well that’s a bid Mockingbird, I wondered to myself.
I was going to the compost pile with some grapes whose time had passed, and on my way there I spotted the grey pile of feathers under a wire fence that had fallen over. I leaned over and picked up the fence, prepared to move the carcass so that the dogs wouldn’t mess with it.
Just as I was wondering to myself about the size of the bird and about how many little fuzzy grey feathers it had, it lifted its head.
Big, round, yellow eyes looked up at me.
Snap, snap, snap. It clicked at me. It spread its wings in two grey arcs larger than any mere Mockingbird could.
This was no Mockingbird. Wings spread, yellow eyes gazing upward, snapping beak. This was an owl, obviously one of the Eastern Screech Owl brood that has been in the trees since spring.
I walked over to the compost pile and tossed the grapes on top. But I kept one for the owl, thinking it might be thirsty — who knows how long it had been lying there pined under the fence. I began to walk back.
The owl wasn’t watching me, anymore. It was looking around, its round owl-eyes giving that look of perplexion that owl gazes always have, only this particular owl had good reason to be perplexed. It looked up into the Pine tree, flapped its wings a couple times, bounced off the ground once then twice then was airborne, gone into the Pine branches or maybe into the Walnut tree beyond.
I looked up to find the branch where it had landed, but there was nothing to see. Maybe it was up there gazing down. Or maybe it was gazing off into the Pecan tree just beyond, where the five owls sit during the day. Or maybe it was just gazing that gaze of perplexion, because that’s what owls do.