Chapter One
I am in love with Mr. Lindstrom, my science teacher. I found out where he
lives and every night I perch on a tree branch outside his bedroom window
and watch him sleep. He sleeps in his underwear: Fruit of the Loom, size 34.
I watch him while I should be hunting. When I don"t hunt, I don"t eat. I grow
thin for love of Mr. Lindstrom. My parents are getting worried. I go to bed at
dawn, after watching Mr. Lindstrom as he sleeps all night. Then my parents
tiptoe in and watch anxiously as I sleep. It"s only fair, I suppose.
I am not stupid, you know. I read teen magazines like Seventeen and Sassy,
just like other girls. I know what Psychology Today has to say about young
girls (I turned fourteen last June) who fall in love with their science teachers.
Mr. Lindstrom is not a substitute for my father. He is nothing like my father.
My father is pale as a potato sprouting in a root cellar; Mr. Lindstrom is red
and brown and furry like the flanks of a deer mouse.
Yes, and the magazines hint that a teacher is a safe object of desire for a girl
not yet ready to date a boy her own age. Mr. Lindstrom is available, they
would say, but not too available. He is near enough that I can count every
pore on his nose, thrill to the sweat stains under his jacket on a hot
September day, tremble at his small kindnesses to me. Ah, the low rumble
of his voice when he is amused! Like the sweet threat of thunder on a sultry
summer"s day. O Mr. Lindstrom!
But I digress.
They would maintain, these ladies and gentlemen who are so wise about
young girls, that because Mr. Lindstrom is forty years old, has a receding
hairline and a mortgage on a split-level in Hillcrest Estates, he is
unobtainable, out of the reach of a girl not yet full grown, and therefore safe.
Is It Really Love? they would demand, with an unbelieving sniff. I think it must
be, but how can I tell? I am so inexperienced in these matters. All I know is
that it is no small thing. I am consumed; I am eaten up with desire for him. If
this is what is called "just" a crush, I shudder to imagine the staggering
weight of the real thing.
It is true that I would very much like Mr. Lindstrom to kiss me. If this
suggests that my longings are for the flesh rather than the spirit, I have no
defense. I can sit and dream up stories by the hour, stories that detail every
precious moment leading up to that fated kiss. What happens next is a little
vague, I confess. A casual affair is simply out of the question; it is marriage
or nothing for me. Yet how can that be? It would not be legal in this state, not
for another year and a half, even with parental consent. It is a long time to
wait.
I can tell you this: other teenage girls are said to suffer from "crushes" for a
week, a month, a year. Then one day they look at their beloved and they
begin to giggle. The madness has passed. They even blush to remember
their passion. This will not happen to me. It is not in my nature. If Mr.
Lindstrom never returns my love, the next sixty or seventy years of my life
will be a heavy burden indeed. Yes, of course I know that in seventy years
Mr. Lindstrom would be a hundred and ten, but with my love to nourish him,
why should he not live beyond the normal span of years?
Mr. Lindstrom is free to marry, I know. A girl who lives in Hillcrest Estates (it
was she who told me where he lives) said that six months ago his wife took
the Pontiac Gran Prix and screeched out of the driveway so fast she left a
two-foot stack of Johnny Mathis records, a tennis racket, and tire tracks on
the blacktop. She has never come back.
Poor Mr. Lindstrom! It is obvious that he lives alone and does not like it. He is
getting a crumpled, dingy look, and his eyes are hurt and surprised.
It is not usual for science teachers to marry students twenty-six years
younger than themselves, but I am not the usual fourteen-year-old either. I
don"t say this to boast; it is simply true.
I am Owl. It is my name as well as my nature. There are birds of prey in my
family going back hundreds of years, one every two or three generations.
Others of my family shift to dog- or cat-kind, a few to hoofed or finned beasts.
Let me be clear. I would not wish you to misunderstand: by night I seek my
living in owl shape, among the fields and woods surrounding my home. By
day I am an ordinary girl (more or less) attending the local high school. I am
no vampire in a fairy tale, to be ruled by the sun or moon; I can shift to either
shape at any time of night or day.
My mother and father are not shapeshifters. They are simple witches,
dabbling in such little arts as they can command: weather, prophecy, herbal
healing. They are the best and kindest of parents to me. I grieve to think how
they suffer now because of my sufferings.
Life is a strange and sometimes terrible thing.
If Mr. Lindstrom had not as a boy loved dinosaurs and chemistry sets, he
would never have become a science teacher, never have come here to teach
me biology and trouble my nights. Sometimes, seeing my dear parents
growing nearly transparent with worry, watching them as they drift aimlessly
through the halls of our ancestral home, up and down the staircases,
wringing their white hands, I wish that young Mr. Lindstrom had chosen to
collect stamps instead of butterflies.
My fellow students at Wildewood Senior High have always thought me
strange, odd. They are right. I am very different from them. My blood, for
instance, is black, while theirs is red. It is a pretty color, human blood, when
it is fresh. I have always had to be very careful not to injure myself when
others might be watching. I am nimble and have a good head for heights
(naturally), so I have had little trouble.
Mr. Lindstrom wants us to prick our fingers tomorrow in science class and
squeeze one drop of blood out onto a glass slide, so that we can test it for
blood groupings. If only he had asked for anything else of mine but that! Even
my blood I would give him, to the last pint, if it would make him happy. But
will it? I doubt it. I don"t know what to do. I may ask another pupil to donate
some of her or his blood to my slide. It is difficult though. Because I am
different I do not make friends easily.
O positive. AB negative. What combination of letters could describe my blood
grouping? They would be letters in no human alphabet, I think.
How odd to think that Mr. Lindstrom has bright scarlet blood like the others
running in his veins, coloring his cheeks. Still, where there is no light there is
no color, so within the dark fortress of his body his blood is as black as
mine. In the night we are kin, Mr. Lindstrom and I.
Sometimes I would like not to be what I am.
As a child I was teased by the other children and pestered by the grownups
for never bringing a lunch of my own to school or eating the hot lunch
provided. My coloring in health is naturally gray rather than rosy, and this
convinced them all that I was at death"s door, entirely owing to my refusal to
eat the "nice ravioli" or pizza or whatever disgusting messes the school
kitchen produced.
My diet is largely composed of small rodents and insects. I can hardly lunch
on grasshoppers before the eyes of several hundred ninth-graders, so I prefer
not to eat lunch at all. Besides, it is unnatural for an owl to be awake at noon
(though not so unusual as some people imagine), and a heavy meal makes it
all the harder to concentrate upon my studies.
Even more to the point, if I were to eat human food I would lose the ability to
fly, even the ability to transform to owl shape. Just a few bites would not do
much harm, but the more I eat, the more obstinately human I become.
One day a few weeks ago, shortly after I realized that I was hopelessly in
love with Mr. Lindstrom, a girl jeered at my solitary, lunchless state in the
cafeteria. I had been feeling rather low-spirited over my chances with Mr.
Lindstrom, and this unkindness was like the straw in the proverb which broke
the camel"s back.
The barren, desert distances that separated Mr. Lindstrom and me seemed
to stretch to truly Sahara-like proportions. Not only are we of different
generations, but we do not even belong to the same species. No, nor do we
belong to the same genus, family, order, or class. We share membership
only in the animal kingdom and in the phylum Chordata, which means that
we both possess a backbone. The most that can be said for our common
ground is that we are more like one another than we are like amoebas,
sponges, snails, or earthworms. What odds, I wonder, would the ladies of
Seventeen and Sassy give on a romance like that?
And then that unpleasant female reminded me of yet another trouble. In the
language of love, an invitation to dine in the company of the beloved is an
unspoken offer of greater intimacy. It is as true of owls as of human beings.
In owl courtship the male tenderly feeds his lady a mouse with the head torn
off or some other similarly tempting tidbit. This traditional engagement gift is
more than can reasonably be expected of Mr. Lindstrom, but food is clearly a
key ingredient to romance. How could I manage a closer relationship without
at some time eating in his presence?
A little disguise might help, I thought. Next day I took a tasty little mouse
and laid it between two slices of white bread (my parents prefer a more
conventional diet than I, so there is plenty of human food in the house). I
wrapped this bundle, as I have observed is the custom, in a sheet of plastic. I
placed it in a small brown paper bag and enclosed a paper napkin. With the
opening sealed by a fold, and my name, "OWL," printed neatly across it, it
looked quite typical, if a little skimpy in size and weight.
My fellow scholars noticed long before lunch. As soon as I arrived at school, I
took it out of my tote bag and put it, rather self-consciously, in my locker.
"Hey!" yelled Steve Moran, whose locker is about five feet away from
mine. "Owl"s got a lunch today!"
A small crowd collected at once. I shut the door to my locker immediately,
but it was too late. Most of these people and I had gone to grade school and
middle school together. They knew that I never, ever, under any
circumstances, brought a lunch.
"What ya bring fer lunch, Owl? Birdseed?" demanded one witty soul. My
classmates had long ago spotted the similarity between my name and my
physical appearance. My face is wide and heart-shaped, with very large
yellow eyes in which the irises are so big that the whites can barely be seen.
I have the kind of hairline which comes to a sharp point in the center of the
forehead, known as a widow"s peak, and my hair falls in soft, feathery, brown
wisps around my neck and shoulders. In short, I look like an owl in human
form—not so strikingly that anyone has ever guessed my dual nature, but
enough to cause comment.
You will notice how ignorant they are about the feeding habits of owls.
Birdseed! As if I were a parakeet!
When they tired of teasing me, I moved on to my homeroom, hoping to have
heard the last of it. Unfortunately, the entire student body seemed starved for
entertainment. They fixed on my small departure from normal routine, and I
had to put up with a good deal of chitchat and foolishness on the subject.
"BuckbuckbuckBUCK!" clucked several boys in my first period, now
apparently under the impression that I was a hen. "Time to feed the chickens,
Paw!" "Ay-yup! Git the lunch bag, Maw!" The entry of Mrs. Gaines restored
order, but an undercurrent of giggling ran through that and every class up until
lunchtime.
At lunch the tension was high. I nearly left the little brown bag, now grown
hateful to me, in my locker. If necessary, I could explain that it had contained
art materials or equipment for a science project. The problem of what to do
about dining with Mr. Lindstrom still haunted me, however, so I took it out
and brought it with me to the cafeteria. Besides all other considerations, it
seemed a shame to waste such a good mouse.
It was a sensation. My audience was not only the ninth grade but any from
the upper grades who could manage to peep around the cafeteria doors
during my lunch hour, not to mention teachers, staff, and administrators, who
had no proper business in the area at the time except to gawk at a girl eating
her lunch. I withdrew my sandwich and pried it out of the confining plastic
with fingers grown clumsy from nerves. I was very careful to pinch the edges
of the bread together so that no hint of the filling (especially the tail or
whiskers) could be seen.
Under the gaze of half a thousand eyes I ate the sandwich, brushed the
crumbs from my lap, dabbed at my mouth with the paper napkin, and
disposed of my trash in the can provided. Then I got out my books as I
normally do and began to study for a Spanish test scheduled for that
afternoon.
In some ways the experiment was a success; in some ways it was a failure.
It was a success in the sense that most of my onlookers seemed to think I
had scored some kind of a point. Since that day no one, either student or
teacher or staff, has annoyed me on the subject of eating lunch.
On the other hand it was a failure for two reasons. One, it has occurred to me
that it is entirely unreasonable to expect a romantic little French bistro or,
indeed, any sort of dining establishment, to offer curried mouse or cricket à la
king or anything else I would find fit to eat. A picnic lunch, prepared by
myself, would be the best I could manage. Perhaps my mother would help
me with the menu for Mr. Lindstrom"s share of the meal.
The second cause for my sense of failure lay in the physical sensations I
experienced after the lunch period. I have been raised exclusively on the diet
appropriate for an owl. I had hoped that this slight deviation from the norm
would not cause me any difficulties, but it did.
The bread, which after all is a strange food, made of a paste of grasses and
greases swollen with the gassy emissions of yeast plants, sat very heavily
upon my stomach. It seemed to swell until I felt as though I had swallowed a
whole loaf instead of two thin slices.
Flying was out of the question that night. I might as well have leapt from the
rooftop with a hundred-pound boulder strapped to my chest. It was several
days before I felt anything like normal in my lower regions. Never more, I
vowed. Not unless my conquest of Mr. Lindstrom"s heart absolutely
depended upon it would human fare pass my lips.
•••
Always and forever, he fell, a dark meteor streaking down the sky. Falling, he
screamed, and fell again. So it ever was, so it ever shall be: the falling, the
dark, the scream.
In the grip of this threefold terror, his mind struggled briefly. Had there not
been a time, long ago and in another place, when it was different? When he
did not fall but sailed on the shadowy arm of night, shaping the wind with
mind and muscle? Wasn"t there, behind the fear, some great joy?
Perhaps it was true, but there was no use remembering that now. That was
the time, so long ago, before he had understood his own evil nature, before
he knew himself a dark angel cast out of the sky, out of joy. That was before
his mind had broken under the weight of self-knowledge.
Yet just for a moment, his thoughts stirred, beat the air. He hung suspended
in the sky, his eternal descent arrested. How silent it was! Below, far, far
below, a sound. A slight . . . rustle. Yes!
He screamed. And fell into darkness.
"He"s done it again. See, it"s all over the place."
The drug-soaked dreams tried to reclaim him, even as he was shaken, not
roughly, not gently.
"Wake up."
His eye opened a slit. There was blood on the pillowcase. A warm liquid filled
his mouth, tasting of salt and iron. His mouth was full of blood. Yes. He
smiled. That was what he had dreamed of: blood in his mouth.
Two
My parents have given me permission to marry Mr. Lindstrom. It is very
sweet of them, but I"m afraid they have little practical understanding of the
laws of New York State or of the true nature of my problem.
"Of course you must marry anyone you like!" They hugged me, then each
other, and laughed. Tenderly my father wiped the tears of relief from my
mother"s face. "Oh, Owl, we were so frightened!"
My passion for Mr. Lindstrom is the first secret I have ever intentionally kept
from my parents. I confessed now because I could not bear to think that I
was causing them such pain. Besides, that mournful creak on the stairs, the
soft, padded drag of their feet as they crept through the halls, the weight of
their anxious eyes upon me as I slept, all of these things were beginning to
get on my nerves.
I felt a curious shyness in the telling that I had never before known with my
parents. My neck and cheeks were strangely warm, and I found it difficult to
meet their eyes. I cannot understand why this should be. My parents love
each other devotedly, and of course one of their fondest hopes for me is that I
should find a love as true as their own. Yet I mumble and duck my head as I
speak of it before them.
Why should I be ashamed of a need that ought to be as simple, as
commonplace, as hunger or thirst? Why have I grown so odd?
My mother became sentimental. "Owl is in love, Papa. In love! Our baby." As
if remembering her own courtship, she slipped her arm through my father"s
and snuggled up to him.
"Of course, we will want to meet this young man," my father said, as sternly
as any man can while his wife is nibbling on his ear.
"Oh! The wedding!" My mother cried out as if she had been stung. "We"ll have
it here, of course." She dropped my father"s arm and backed up against the
fireplace to get a better view of the room.
"Hmmm," she said thoughtfully. "Hmmm . . ." She shook her head, the
excitement leaking from her like air from a punctured balloon. "Oh dear," she
murmured faintly. "Oh dear! Not quite exactly . . . is it?"
She looked so woebegone that my father lost some of his proud-father-of-the-
bride glow and began to look nervously around the familiar room. "Something
wrong, Nesta? Looks very nice, I always think." He rubbed his long, thin
hands together and cracked his knuckles hopefully.
It should have been funny. I bought a Bride magazine the other day at the
supermarket, and I know the sort of home they mean when they say, "The
bride was married from her home." Those homes always have running water
and electricity, not to mention rugs and furniture and pictures on the wall. Not
that we have no furniture at all. We have our beds; one for me and a big old
four-poster for my parents. There is a table in the dining room and one in the
kitchen, a nice big one, and we each have a chair. It is enough.
Then too, we keep most of the shutters closed so that the neighborhood
children cannot look in, which makes it rather dark, even in the daytime. I
prefer the darkness, and luckily, it suits my parents as well.
The big, high-ceilinged, empty rooms—there are eighteen or nineteen, I
think—are a wonderful place for an owl. It was there that I learned to fly and
there that I still fly on bitter cold winter nights, hunting the mice and
occasional rats that creep in through the cracks.
I say it should have been funny, comparing our grand (but admittedly dark
and empty) mansion with the homes of the magazine brides. Yet I was not
amused. For the first time in my life, I found myself growing irritated with my
mother and father. Their innocence, which usually I find so touching, annoyed
rather than pleased me. It was very ungrateful of me, but I"m afraid my love for
Mr. Lindstrom is making me unreasonable.
I found myself speaking quite sharply to my poor mother. "Oh, Mother! Don"t
be so stupid!" I snapped and turned abruptly away.
Mother and Father stared at me, confused, frightened. I could not meet their
eyes but stood, stirring a little heap of dead leaves and mouse remains with
the toe of my athletic shoe, half remorseful, half defiant.
"Darling, what is it?"
"My dear girl, you can tell us! How are we being stupid?"
In my misery I blurted out, "He doesn"t want to marry me. He barely knows I
exist! And even if he did, even if he loved me, we couldn"t be married legally.
I"m underage."
My parents were utterly baffled. As parents go they are more fond than wise.
They could understand none of it. How anyone I loved could not love me in
return, could not desire our marriage as passionately as I, was entirely
beyond them. And as for the role of the state of New York in thwarting young
love, they simply shook their heads in wonderment.
"The wickedness of it!" my mother whispered in awe. "To think how they
demand all that tax money every year, hundreds and hundreds of dollars!
Money scraped together with so much hardship . . ." Mother"s lips trembled,
and her fingers worried at the frayed hem of her apron, thinking, I knew, of the
stacks of nickels and dimes, little mounds of one- and five- and ten-dollar
bills. "And now we find out the sort of laws that our money goes to support!
It"s . . . it"s villainous!"
"Actually," my father, who is a fair man, corrected her, "it isn"t the state that
wants that money every year. They know our income is too small to tax. It"s
the town that sends the policeman out to collect the property tax."
My family is not wealthy, though historically some generations have been
very prosperous. My mother has a large vegetable and herb garden in the
back yard, and she cans enough to fill most of my parents" nutritional needs
for the year. Flour for bread and a few other staples are all they need at the
supermarket. I am able to contribute fresh meat several times a week,
usually mice, although they are delighted with the occasional rabbit I can
snare. I feed myself quite adequately without assistance.
For the rest, they both visit the dump on a regular basis, gleaning all sorts of
odds and ends that can be put to good use. The attics are filled with furniture,
some of it valuable, which can be sold in an emergency. There are trunks of
clothing up there as well, which are made over by my mother"s nimble needle
to fit us all. Much of the clothing is well over a hundred years old. This may
explain why we look, as the clerk at the Shop "n" Save says, "so sort of
quaint."
The nickels and dimes and paper money come in through the kitchen door,
the bills tightly rolled and damp with nervous sweat. They come because of
the sign at the back door which reads:
HERBAL REMEDIES
—NATURE"S OWN CURE—
FRESH VEGETABLES IN SEASON.
Generally people send their children around, with an order like "A pound of
tomatoes, please, and Mom says can she have some more of the usual. She
says you"ll know what she means."
The "usual" can be anything from rheumatism salve to a "Tonic for Tired
Husbands." Young people, and some who are no longer young, come looking
for love potions. Businesspeople want money spells, expectant mothers ask
for knot charms against pain, brides want blue skies for their weddings, and
the anxious (or bored) want to have their fortunes told.
The money spell works, if not very spectacularly. My father keeps one in our
little metal cash box and, as he says, we never lack for anything we truly
want or need. It does not seem to be very good at producing anything beyond
the essentials, however.
The money spell in fact works better than some of the others. My parents are
very, very honest. They would never sell a charm, no, not the merest good-
luck piece, if they did not believe it gave value for money. On the other hand,
they are both blessed with an optimistic and uncritical nature, so they are
able to offer quite a large line of goods with a clear conscience. The laws of
chance and probability do not worry them much.
""There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in
your philosophy,"" is my mother"s answer to any criticisms, quoting the poet
Shakespeare.
""A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,""" adds my father, in
the words of the great American philosopher Emerson.
Thus lightly do they dismiss logic and even science, that discipline in which
Mr. Lindstrom so distinguishes himself. Out of loyalty to him, I sometimes
attempt to reason with them. The magazine writers inform me that similar
values and interests are very important in a relationship. Unfortunately my
own dual nature defies rational explanation, which makes it difficult for me to
argue the scientific viewpoint very convincingly. There are other laws, it
seems, which are both subtler and stranger than the laws of reason.
My father was looking thoughtful. His bony fingers plucked unhappily at the
thin braid of gray hair that straggles down his neck. Finally he thrust the end
of the braid into his mouth and began to chew on it, a sure sign of mental
distress.
"Perhaps, sweetie," my father suggested hesitantly, "he is not the right one
for you?"
Before I could reassure him, my father continued, his steel-wool eyebrows
bunching fiercely over his nose, "A man so thickheaded, so boorish, as not to
appreciate your fine qualities? What sort of a man is that, after all? The
swine," he growled, warming to his theme. "He ought not to be allowed to
teach sensitive young girls. Trifling with their hearts in this callous way! Why,
the man ought to be dismissed from his job at the high school!"
"Daddy!" I cried, horrified. "How dare you say these things about the man I
love with all my heart and soul! Remember who I am. I am Owl; it is in my
nature to give my love once and only once in a lifetime. I shall love him until I
die, or he does."
My father folded his arms across his chest and frowned down at me. "The
last part could be arranged," he said darkly.
"Fritz!" shrieked my mother in protest.
I did not speak; I merely looked at him.
He groaned, and passed a hand over his face. "Baby, I"m sorry. I know what
you say is true. But when I think of that man, having the gall to treat you so!
How could it not make a father"s blood boil?"
My mother put an arm around my shoulder. "Hush, Fritz! You should be
ashamed to speak of our future son-in-law so." She whispered in my
ear, "He"s just jealous, Owl. Fathers are always like that when they have to
give up their baby girl. Now come into the kitchen and tell me all about him. I
want to know every single detail."
So I told her every single detail. I told her about his hair, his eyes, his smile,
the way he walks, the nick in his chin he gave himself shaving this morning. I
reported on his jokes, his taste in sweaters, the long hairs in his nose, what
he said today about the international situation, how his left shoe has a small
hole starting right up near the big toe—everything.
My foolish embarrassment vanished. I found great relief in being able to
speak of him openly. It was rather difficult to stop. Even after my parents had
eaten and I had completed my homework, at an hour when I normally retire
for a few hours of sleep before going hunting, I still sat talking. I who rarely
speak more than a handful of words in the course of a day, I prattled, I
chattered, I babbled like a brook.
After three hours I had sketched in the outlines of his portrait, but I still had
much to say. By this time, however, I was as hoarse as a crow and, to a
sensitive eye, it was obvious that even my indulgent mother was ready for a
change of subject.
She had leaned back in her chair, her head against my father"s shoulder. Her
eyes were shut—to concentrate better, I suppose—but she seemed weary to
me.
My father sat bolt upright and stared moodily off into the scullery. He was
sulking simply because Mr. Lindstrom had formed the sole topic of
conversation for the evening. Remembering his cruel speech earlier, I ignored
his ill humor and continued my remarks.
At last my mother stirred and, yawning (you see I was right about her being
tired), said, "Perhaps you had better go to bed, dear, so as to be fresh for the
night"s hunt. And be sure you do go hunting! Don"t just watch Mr. Lindstrom
all night!"
"Did I tell you that he hardly ever snores? Only when he gets on his stomach
sometimes he makes this tiny little sound . . . I don"t know how to describe it
exactly, like dead leaves scuffling along the ground—"
"If you can hear him through two panes of glass, perched on a tree limb,
what, ten feet away? he must have a snore like a freight train," my father
interrupted rudely.
"Mother," I said coldly, "would you please tell Father that I, like all owls, have
exceptionally fine hearing? I should think it would be something of which he
would already be aware."
"Oh, dear," Mother said. "Do go to bed, Owl. You"ll be worn to a frazzle
tonight otherwise."
I left with dignity, kissing my mother with more than my usual affection and
neglecting to kiss my father at all. My father made some sort of growling
noise as I left the room. Very unlike him; he is usually such a quiet, loving
man. My mother must be right. He is jealous of Mr. Lindstrom. How silly!
I took my mother"s advice. Refreshed by four hours" sleep and feeling much
happier since our talk, I paid only a brief visit to Mr. Lindstrom"s house. He
was sound asleep but had thrown off the coverlet and was clutching his
pillow, as if for comfort. Poor betrayed, abandoned Mr. Lindstrom!
How lucky it is, I thought, as I gazed lovingly down upon him, that the master
bedroom should be at the back of the house, and that the window near the
bed should be so close to a very convenient tree. Since the rear windows
faced into dense woods, Mr. Lindstrom (or more probably, the heartless Mrs.
Lindstrom) had felt it was unnecessary to use any but thin net curtains on
the bedroom window. Owl eyesight is far superior to human vision, just as our
sense of hearing far surpasses yours. I could see him perfectly clearly.
The moon was nearly full. Fat and white and terribly bright, it lit the wintry
world about me with a cold silvery light, throwing knife-edged shadows behind
every stick and stone. The bird feeder creaked gently in the wind, and an iced-
over birdbath glittered dimly in the moon"s beams. I regarded these objects
with pleasure. They were intended for the use of songbirds and suchlike silly
beasts, but they warmed my heart all the same. We had something in
common after all: we were both interested in birds!
My sensitive ears detected below me the shrill bickering of a pair of mice,
foolishly abroad in the night. Mice, as you may know, are quarrelsome,
peevish animals in their private lives, always squeaking out their discontents
for all the world to hear. It makes them very easy to catch. Beside me the
gray skeleton fingers of the maple tree scraped out a melancholy tune,
reminding me that winter is the time of famine and that I had need of
something to put weight on my underfed frame. I pounced.
No mouse ever tasted sweeter. It could be, I thought, as I swallowed the
morsel whole (headfirst is best), that this very mouse had entered Mr.
Lindstrom"s house, had fed upon his bread and cheese, had nibbled on his
soap and candles. Here was communion indeed! I sat motionless outside his
window, digesting reverently.
Then, my eyes and brain filled with his image and my stomach (possibly)
filled with bits and scrapings of his intimate possessions, I flew off into the
chill night. The pursuit of love must, after all, sometimes give way to the
pursuit of a meal.