O is for Owls

When you think about it, an owl is a pretty spooky creature.

With it’s piercing eyes, fearsome looking claws, ghostly nighttime terwhit-terwhooing and the ability to near on turn its head 360 degrees, you’d think that it’d be the stuff of nightmares to a small child.

Yet small children seem to love them. So much so, that they seem to be a popular nursery decoration, with cartoonish owl creations beaming down happily on slumbering children, their eyes closed in half moon happiness watching over the little ones sleep.

When you think about it, that’s a bit odd too. Because owls are nocturnal, and most parents want their children NOT to be nocturnal. So ideally, owls should be out as a nighttime nursery decoration. In my mind, cats are far more appropriate, since they generally sleep up to 23 hours a day – a far more pleasing prospect. AND they produce their own white noise – who doesn’t feel happy at the sound of a cat purring? Perhaps that’s why the owl and the pussycat went on a journey together – the owl kept watch during the night and the cat purred to keep the owl happy.

In fact, so often these days have I seen cartoonish owls that I forgot that they exist in reality. So it was quite exciting whilst camping last weekend, after the sun had set and we were sat around the campfire in our sleeping bags looking like oddly shaped caterpillars, to hear a faint ‘terwhit-terwoo’ emanating from the line of trees next to our tent. OWL! OWL! we shouted, forgetting that actually, the little ones were in bed and were more likely to be scared out of their wits by this unseen hooting creature than excited to the extent that we were.

The next night the owl hooted again, and the hooting still provided the same levels of excitement.

So it appears, that even though they are fiendish looking, evil clawed, head turning ghostly sounding creatures of the night, owls actually are pretty amazing.

Perhaps I will put some in Bubby D’s room, after all.