night visitors

As I lay awake in bed very early this morning, maybe 4am, with the windows open to the wonderfully cool sixty degree night, I heard a barred owl making it's screeching call. Folklore claims he says, "I cook for me, who cooks for ya'll?" I am thrilled by the sound echoing through the foggy dark. I held my breath, straining to hear him a half dozen more times before he was gone.

My house sits on the edge of a woods and on the edge of what once was a serene field of grasses which went green, gold, and brown with the seasons. Families of deer nibbled there. Quail lived in the grasses and we'd seen a red fox make his way through. Now it is parceled off, with sewer hook-ups at half mast here and there. It is half full of monstrously large houses, with their outdoor lighting and their contracts with Chem-lawn for perfect fairway green lawns. Sad but inevitable, I suppose. Yes, yes, I know, hypocritically my own home sits on a corner of that same woods and field. At least it is small and compact, carving out just enough space for the three of us and a garden with no chemicals. We have left dead trees and thickets and brushpiles for wildlife. We try to give them space, try to leave smaller footprints as we tromp over the earth. It gives me some consolation.

We still have animals around, mostly the vastly over-populated ones--deer who take whatever they want from the garden, and raccoons who come up on the porch looking for catfood or to see if we have any more chickens to kill. A mother deer left her newborn baby with us for one day, safely tucked in amongst some old logs and tall grass in the yard. Many songbirds sing me awake in the morning from the pines and shrubs and the wild olive thicket. Bats circle around when I sit on the porch in the evenings, and sometimes I hear the distinctive trill of a Red-Wing Blackbird. Hawks and wild geese visit occasionally. But it is a surprise and a joy to hear an owl calling through the night. It is chilling and wonderful to hear a coyote's piercing howl from the edges of the woods. It comforts me to know that these creatures still come around some.