“What
are you doing?” The biggest pigeon cooed surprised, so that the
worm he had been holding dropped all the way back to the ground.
Perched
on the edge of the nest, flapping her little wings to maintain
balance, baby owl hooted: “What does it look like I'm doing?”
“You're
not flying out yet, are you?”
“Less
then two days ago, you were still an egg!”
Baby
owl had contemplated telling them the truth, but when she saw how the
worms had dropped from their silly beaks when they tried to speak,
she changed her mind. Instead, she decided she would come back to
share her wealth with them once she'd found the treasure.
“Cooing
won't help,” Baby owl said to them. “I have to go.”
“But
where are you going?” asked her mother.
“You
wouldn't understand,” she said. “I'm not like you.”
“Don't
you dare speak to your mother like that,” said papa pigeon, and
with his beak he pushed baby owl back into the nest.
This
was more than the little owl could take. “Maybe you're right, maybe
you would understand. I am going out to look for my wisdom. Seeing
that neither of you have any, you might understand what it's like to
search for it. But the difference between you and me is that you
failed, horribly. And I will succeed.”
“Your
wisdom?” Her mother cooed.
“What
do you think you are,” papa pigeon said, “an owl or something?”
Baby
owl bitterly climbed back onto the rim of the nest. She was puffing
with effort and anger, and her whole body seemed to inflate, deflate,
inflate, deflate at a high rate.
“Fools,”
she hooted when she reached the top. Her head turned round to her
foster pigeons one last time. Then she spread her little wings and
stepped over the edge.
As the
wind caught under her wings, all sorts of thoughts flew into her
feathers. She suddenly knew she would never see her parents again.
She wouldn't come back to share her wisdom with anybody. The creaky
branch had been right. Owls are lonesome creatures. They don't love
anybody.
Posts
Hah, what an arrogant owl! But I give her credit for doing no harm. I wonder when owls were first associated with wisdom. It wasn't always so, because Billy Bunter was called "the Fat Owl of the Remove".
ReplyDeleteI thought it was the Ancient Greeks that made the connection, because Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom, was often paired with an owl. Are you really that old? According to wikipedia, Billy Bunter certainly isn't (he was conceived in the 1890's).
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting nugget of wikiwisdom: "The name Bunter was in common use at the time, due to the popularity of a patent medicine known as Bunter's Nervine Tonic. It also meant a low vulgar woman."
You must have a pretty good idea of how old I am, Debs, thanks to your googling. But we won't discuss that here!
ReplyDeleteThanks for that classical tidbit. I'm sure you could write an interesting article titled "Owls - wise or stupid?"