Wesley the Owl

  I was reading a book at dusk when I heard something that made me jump out of my chair. It was the same earsplitting mechanical noise Wesley always made when he wanted me to join him in a nest, but it was off in the distance. Before Wesley was a part of my life, I would never have tuned in to such a sound. I dropped my book and ran outside. In the darkening sky far above me was a lone male barn owl, swooping gracefully in large figure eights, screeching in that unearthly manner all the while. From a nearby tree a female owl screamed in response. Then she shot straight up into the air toward the male. They circled each other closer and closer, and locked talons. They spun together, broke off, circled in the air, locked talons, and spun again. Their magnificent dance continued for several minutes before they flew off together, to mate.

  UNCLE WARREN PHONED to tell me that Grandma had been admitted to the hospital. Though it was supposedly nothing serious, the whole family visited her often, myself included. Grandpa was always there early in the morning until very late at night, when they kicked him out. When they’d let him, he sometimes spent the night. But Grandma did not get better. Her kidneys began to fail. On my last visit with her, she was heavily drugged. I bent down and told her, “Grandma, I wanted to surprise you when you came to visit me, but I’ll just tell you instead. I have a barn owl. His name is Wesley. He lives with me in my bedroom.”

  Her eyes lit up for a moment and she said, “So did I.”

  I didn’t know what to think about her comment, and she didn’t elaborate, but fell asleep.

  She died shortly after that.

  A few months after Grandma’s funeral, I told Grandpa that I had a real live barn owl named Wesley.

  “I tried to tell Grandma about it, but I don’t think she understood.”

  “You have a barn owl?” My grandpa had a funny look on his face.

  “Yes, and Grandma said she had one, too, but I think she meant in her collection.”

  “Oh, no, Stacey, we had a barn owl. A real live one. His name was Weisel.”

  “Weisel??” It sounded a lot like Wesley, the way he said it.

  “Yeah, you know, like wise ol’ owl. Wise Ol’ Weisel.”

  “Wow, Grandpa, that sounds an awful lot like Wesley.”

  He thought for a moment. “You’re right, it sure does. It sure does. Well, I’ll be.”

  “How did she end up with Weisel?” I asked.

  “She’s always been an owl fanatic. Some neighbors found a barn owl being savaged by two dogs and ran between them to rescue the owl. The dogs bit them up pretty bad, too, but the neighbors finally got the dogs off. Then they didn’t know what to do with the owl.”

  “Did the owl attack them?” I asked.

  “No, he seemed to understand that they had saved his life. I think he was in shock pretty much. Anyway, one of the neighbors remembered that your grandma collected owls and thought she might take this guy in. They were right of course. His wing was really a mess so we rushed him right to the vet. In those days there was no wildlife rehab place so it was up to whoever found an animal to make sure it was taken care of properly. The vet fixed him up as best he could. The wing wasn’t broken and Weisel could still fly, just not very well. Then the vet sat us down and told us everything that had to be done to care for the owl, and he told us it would never survive in the wild again so it was up to us.”

  I shook my head in wonder that my grandmother had had an unreleasable barn owl, too.

  “Your uncle Warren and I built him a huge aviary around a tree!” Grandpa continued. “That guy had it pretty good.”

  “What did she feed him?” I asked.

  “Mice! What else do you feed an owl! And I fed him, not your grandma. She wasn’t too keen on those mice.” He smiled.

  “So really Weisel was your owl as much as hers, wasn’t he?”

  “Yep. He sure was. He had a grand old time in that big tree of his. We also put in extra perches for him. The aviary was huge. We had him for the rest of his life, old Weisel.”

  “Grandpa, why have I never heard a word about him until now?”

  Grandpa reached over and hugged me.

  “Stacey, all of your grandma’s animals were like human children to her. Whenever one of them died, she was so devastated that she never spoke of them again.”

  At home I told Wesley of my sorrow as I had done many times in our years together. “Wes, I am so sad that my grandmother and I never figured out that we both adopted barn owls.” He preened himself and then my face for a moment with gentle movements of his beak.

  Wesley groomed on and off all day, but about twice a day he had a serious total body grooming session during which it was hard to distract him. He went over every feather and it took at least an hour. I plunged my face into his sweet-smelling feathers while he did this, and followed his beak with my nose.

  His body was perfectly synchronized. When Wesley pulled a feather that was ready to come out, he invariably also pulled out the exact opposite corresponding feather on the other side. If it was the third secondary flight feather on the left side, a few minutes later out would come the third secondary flight feather on the right. And Wesley could move entire sections of feathers into reach by shifting the skin underneath. One whole side of his body would suddenly move closer to the front so he could groom it with his beak. Then that patch of feathers would ripple back to where it belonged. I knew his grooming routine intimately.

  “Someday I will tell Grandma all about you, Wesley. Perhaps we will walk together, Grandma and Weisel, you and I.”

  Wesley opened his wings and began to arrange his long, breathtaking flight feathers. These were not replaced very often—only one pair of feathers every six weeks or so. When the time came he would work at loosening one of these beauties—pulling his wing way out and yanking and worrying the feather until it would finally come free. Then he would hold it and play with it. I always tried to take the used flight feathers before he could ruin them, because they were treasures to me. But this time, Wesley was one step ahead. He held the old feather out in his beak. Surprised, I took it and thanked him, making much of his gift, and placed the feather in a vase where he could see it. But Wes wasn’t finished. The equal and opposite feather had to come out, too. Wes swung around to his other wing and presented me with the matching flight feather, his deep obsidian eyes locked on mine.

  Grandpa still played and taught drums and continued with his life. After an appropriate time had elapsed, the predictable “casserole brigade” started appearing at his doorstep. Unfailingly polite, he thanked each lady for her kind attention, but told her there was only one woman for him and that was Grandma. He had lived his lifelong love. This was the Way of the Owl.

  THE YEARS I spent in labs and lectures and reading textbooks deepened my view that the universe is a place of wonder and meaning. Science has made many thrilling discoveries, but along the way it has also opened up myriad, endlessly branching questions. It’s like we are scrabbling in hard dirt with our hands, trying to reach China, and have barely broken the the surface. Many scientists consider the idea that there may be something more that science will never be able to explain. At Caltech, a sizable group of physicists felt this way, some with Nobel Prizes. The more they gazed into the vast stretches of the universe, or the vast empty spaces within atoms, the more wonder they felt. They formed a group that met once a week to discuss the spiritual side of their experiences.

  I gazed into the universe of Wesley’s eyes almost every day for nineteen years. We communicated—spirit to spirit. I can’t really explain it, but things occurred to me when I “listened” to him, thoughts that were not my own. Perhaps he was as thoughtful as I, but in a way that I could never touch or understand; perhaps he understood and saw things that I can’t. When I would look into his relaxed, at-peace-with-himself eyes, I felt like I was looking into something inscrutable, unobtainable, deeper than we can possibly imagine, an old soul that reflected something bigger, ineffable, eternal.

  Even though I had be
en trained to exclude thoughts about spirits and unquantifiable, immeasurable feelings that could taint scientific conclusions, Wesley’s presence in my life influenced my thinking. Now I see that to exclude a certain kind of idea is itself creating a bias. What if the truth screams as loudly as a male barn owl crying for a mate, and we miss it because we have not allowed ourselves to listen to the channel it’s on—or we’ve tuned it out? Wesley helped me feel God—to “get” the idea of God and the soul in a way that I had not before and couldn’t get from a theological sermon. I’ve decided not to discount those feelings and the wonder and gratitude that comes with them.

  13

  The Sex Tapes

  ONE OF MY favorite things about living in my new town was the local coffee shop, La Costa Coffee Roasters, established long before a Starbucks anchored every neighborhood shopping mall. Their breakfast blend is beyond compare. Plus, they had a gift shop filled with owl merchandise. It was almost like being at Grandma’s house. I bought a stuffed owl one morning and mentioned to the owner, John, that I was an owl fanatic.

  “In fact,” I said, yelling over the bean roaster, “I have been taping wild owl sounds for several years now.” I took a chance that he might be an owl buff, too. “So if you ever hear about any nesting owls around here, let me know and I’ll tape them.”

  “The owls? Okay, that’s fine,” he yelled back.

  “No, not toy owls, real owls,” I shouted.

  “Yeah, they’re here,” he yelled again.

  “No, I mean living owls, like a nesting pair.”

  “Yup, they’re still here,” he said again, looking annoyed.

  Having trouble getting through to him, I clarified: “No, John, what I mean is I’m looking for a pair of barn owls that I can watch at night and tape-record.”

  He turned off the machine.

  “And I’m telling you that, yes, we have real barn owls. Why do you think my shop has all this owl stuff?

  “You…you have an owl nest?” I said, incredulous.

  “Yup. They’ve nested here for four years now. And they’re so noisy that the first year I thought I’d lose business. But the weirdest thing is no one even notices them. People eat outside while the owls fly right over their heads and scream. No one even looks up. On Saturday nights we have live music out there and the owls almost drown it out, but nobody says a word. People are strange.”

  I couldn’t believe my luck. “Could you show me where exactly?” I asked.

  “Sure.” He wiped his hands on a towel and we went out the side door.

  He pointed to the top of a decorative stucco tower.

  “The nest is up there under the tower roof,” he said.

  I had struck gold. I could park my Toyota Celica right below the tower next to the coffeehouse and have a clear view.

  “It’s a good thing the cleanup crew gets here really early,” said John. “In the morning there are mouse parts all over the place and these brown fur balls. What are those things anyway?”

  “They’re owl pellets.” I explained how owls digest their mice and cough up the bones and fur.

  “That sounds miserable…like a cat choking up hairballs,” he replied. “I had no idea, I just figured owls pooped a lot.”

  We went back inside and he turned the coffee roaster back on. “Have a good day! Thanks so much!” I yelled. “Good luck.” He waved.

  I couldn’t wait to visit these owls, so that evening I took a nap and drove down to the coffeehouse at around 2:00 a.m. By then the movie theater had let out and the parking lot was empty. I rolled down my window and, sure enough, heard the unearthly din of five screaming barn owl babies clustered on top of the tower roof with their mother, begging for food. The oldest and most developed owlet began hopping between the tower and the roof of the main building, with an assist from fledgling wings.

  The father owl was hunting frantically, shuttling back and forth from the nearby open field, each time with a mouse in his beak. He was having no trouble finding mice, but the babies were so ravenous he could barely hunt fast enough to please them. Poor guy, I thought. I bet he’s just exhausted by morning. I opened my sunroof and set the tape recorder on top of my car. The owls were used to cars, so they ignored my presence.

  The father was noticeably smaller than the mother, with mostly white feathers underneath. Female barns owls are usually darker than the males, but that’s just a rule of thumb, so it can still be hard to tell them apart. The main difference is size. The female is about a third larger than the male and much more aggressive. In most of the nests I’ve observed, the mother is a screaming banshee—hell on wings—and the father is a “dear old dad” type—pretty laid back and mellow. Their personalities make sense. The female has to defend the nest and the male has to stay focused on hunting and not get easily frustrated. If he weren’t mellow, he’d have abandoned the screaming bunch a long time ago; but he’s patient to a fault.

  The father continued to hunt while the babies and mother screeched and jockeyed for position on the tower, anticipating his next delivery. I was watching this owl family drama for a couple of hours, recording a fascinating variety of vocalizations, when a delivery truck pulled into the parking lot. The sun had not yet risen, though the dark sky was softening on the horizon. The driver began unloading supplies for the coffeehouse and carried a box across the outdoor eating area to a locked storage room.

  The mother owl was already worked up, and now her territory was being invaded. She chirped to her babies and they hunched up next to her, silently. Then she stood on the edge of the roof, gathered herself, and dived straight down with a shrill scream. It was like no sound I’d ever heard from an owl, more like the scream of an enraged eagle, and even from a distance it about burst my eardrums. At the last moment she pulled up, both talons spread out with claws bared, and raked the air over the man’s bald head, missing by an inch. Then she flew back up to the top of the tower.

  The man didn’t even notice! He didn’t flinch, didn’t look up, didn’t change his bored, trudging stride. Nothing.

  The mother owl was as perplexed as I was. Perhaps she needed to do it again. And this would be a good lesson for the owl babies, who had stopped their constant roughhousing and screeching to watch her intently. So she tried again, producing an even more vicious screech. She slicked her body tightly for speed and dived straight down, pulling up at the last second, talons raking over his head, missing by just a wisp of air. Again he paid no attention at all!

  By this time, I was pressing my face into a pillow, trying to muffle my laughter. I didn’t want to mess up the recording.

  It never crossed my mind that the deliveryman was in danger. The mother owl just wanted to scare him off, though it certainly wasn’t working. He continued unloading supplies. Unless that deliveryman was deaf, he had to have heard those earsplitting screeches. And how could he not have noticed the air currents from a rather large object that was practically flying into his head? Somehow, the guy had completely tuned out his immediate environment. For him, this was a tedious morning like any other that he needed to forge through.

  Shortly after the deliveryman left, I packed up my equipment and pulled out of the parking lot, exhausted but happy with the success of my recording session. I hoped Dr. Penfield would find some interesting and unusual owl sounds. I was sure he’d heard every vocalization wild owls could make, but for me it was a thrill hearing them firsthand. I still had much to learn from barn owls.

  When I got home Wesley greeted me with his chatter of unfettered joy. He certainly knew how to live in the moment. Never jaded, he was always so happy and boisterously expressive whenever I returned from my short trips away. He would update me with chirps, twitters, long patterns of exuberant cries, and even tiny hisses when he recalled something that had happened during the day that he didn’t like—such as someone besides me feeding him. In that instance, he’d stare at the place where that person had stood and hiss while recalling the hand that fed him. Then he’d go on with h
is daily update. If he had been sleeping, he’d turn, hop up to the dowel, then do a long arabesque with one wing and leg stretching back.

  I had the tape recorder with me so I popped in a fresh cassette and left it running while I unleashed Wesley. He played all over the room, chattering and commenting on this and that. He always “talked” about almost everything.

  “Okay, Mr. Constant Comment,” I told him, “you sure have a lot of good things to say to Dr. Penfield’s machine tonight.”

  Wesley flew up to the top of the curtain rod then down to my bed and upon landing, bent over the quilt quizzically, looking under each fold to see if there were any surprises. Perhaps he could even wedge himself in there. He poked his head into the fold. No, his body wasn’t going to fit. He cried, “Reek reek reek reek!” and leapt into the air, pouncing on his personal pillow. He then looked over at me with great interest as I sat on my side of the bed.

  “Bzzzzztttthhhhh,” he screeched (some people say it sounds like a handsaw when owls make this quiet screech), asking for a magazine.

  “Do you want one of these magazines, Wes?” I asked.

  “Twitter twitter” was his answer, i.e., “yes.”

  “Okay, here you go.”

  He started ripping it up. After a while he got tired of this and wanted to cuddle, so he came over to me with soft twitters and chirps, some barely audible. I still had the recorder running. He and I talked quietly back and forth, his soft sounds recorded for the first time. Then he climbed into my arms and fell asleep, lying as always on his stomach with his feet dangling, head in my left hand. As I stroked his neck feathers and ears, he made such tiny sounds that I couldn’t actually hear them. I could only feel his diaphragm moving. I answered with an almost equal softness to let him know I’d “heard” him.