Owl, again

My neighbor Masha, a young native of Ukraine, met up with me a the 36A stop from Downtown to Mt. Lebanon late this afternoon.

She had been off for a few weeks for a trip to Paris with her husband and then on to Ukraine to visit her parents. We talked about her trip, (her first time to Paris and she adored it) and other things, including whether I had any book recommendations.

Sadly, having checked out Jayne Anne Phillips' "Lark and Termite," I could only report that I had started it a couple times and had been unable to finish. Not for lack of interest, but for lack of time. I returned it, overdue. I hope to get back to it someday.

When I am bereft of meaty reading material, and bereft of time, I return to old favorites that do not require a lot of concentration.

My "Peanuts" collection is a great source of non heavy-duty-brain-cell-sucking-energy-before-bedtime-reading-if-I-don't-have-anything-else-going-on reading. I love Charlie Brown!

I like to retreat, too, to old favorites. This week I have been re-reading "Owl," by William Service. It is a lovely story of a small wild creature, never a human pet, living its life within a human family.

I like it, in part, because I have been listening to the Owl(s) in the park by our house. Two weeks ago, at 3 a.m., I woke up (being past 50, that happens a lot). In fact, an owl woke me up, Who-Who-Who-Who-Who-ing. I crawled out of bed, poured some milk or wine, crawled back in and just listened for about a half hour in deep night.

Tonight, at dusk, the dogs and I went out for our evening walk. As we strolled in the gathering gray, Owl hooted and I spotted him, high up in the park canopy, a dark, distinctive shape in the fading light.

He hooted, his horned head bobbing forward and back, forward and back.

We stood below, me (at least) very attentive. He saw us; the tilt of that horned head changed and then wings extended and he flapped, slowly, away.

As we walked up the street out of the park, I listed to his call, and not much further away in the park soccer field, the hooting of parents cheering on their kids with calls of "good game."

And all the while in the background, the crickets chirred, really softly, marking the end of the season.