Tag Archives: Ancient

A Screech In The Dark

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Deep in a grove of ancient massive cottonwood trees the sun has gone down turning what was earlier a bright sun filled space into one now filled with shadows and looming arboreal giants standing quietly, their enormous branches arching overhead like giant arms covered with the newly minted leaves of spring.

There was a slight breeze earlier but now all is still. Silence has settled over the grove and the slightest sound, from the rustling of a vole in the leaf strewn floor, to the footsteps of those who have come here to observe one of natures small miracles are magnified. The miracle everyone wants to see is a small puff of feathers slightly larger than a softball called an Eastern Screech owl and she and her mate have chosen a small opening in one of the cottonwoods to nest and raise her four owlets.

The owlets are now large enough that they seem to fill the cavity within the tree to its maximum allowance of owls. They spend most of their time peering out of the opening in the massive tree limb, small little heads still covered with the light downy feathers of the very young, bobbing up and down, side to side, rotating in a circle, trying to make sense of what they see outside of the confines of the only home they’ve known.

Suddenly there is a call, a small sound that has been likened to a soft tremolo and a whinny, not the grating fingernails on the blackboard sound that comes to mind hearing it described as a screech. It is a beautiful, delicate sound that hangs in the air for a heartbeat after being uttered. Then another and another, the female perched on a nearby branch calling and coaxing, trying to get the remaining owlets to leave the nest.

Of the four owlets, two are much larger than their siblings due to something called asynchronous hatching which roughly means the eggs are laid a day or so apart maybe longer, causing the first born to have more food, grow bigger and leave the nest sooner, which is what the first two owlets have done. They haven’t gone far however as the they still need to be fed by the parents until they can fly. They are perched huddled together on a nearby branch still very much a part of the family.

The adults are now spending most of their time outside the nest on nearby branches, calling to the remaining youngsters inside, bringing them the occasional mouse or vole whichever is unlucky enough to be spotted by these silent hunters, coaxing them to leave the nest and venture forth out into the wide new world they’ve come into.

Soon full darkness has overcome the grove and those that have come here to see and enjoy this connection with nature have left, leaving these beautiful creatures to their solitude, their gentle calls still gracing the night.

Ancient Secrets

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Ancient Secrets42028_3644-3665click to enlarge

I’m kind of mad at Europe right now. They’re always going on about how old everything is over there and how we don’t have anything ‘old’ because we’re such a young upstart place with no history and as such we don’t account for much. Well I call BullPucky on that. They might have some castles and aqueducts and old beer joints but they don’t have this. I was there, in Europe, I looked around and I didn’t see anything like this. I saw a bunch of old churches and I can tell you, making them big and old isn’t the same. You walk around here and you can feel the old just seeping out of the stone. I’m very sure, confident in fact, that our stone, besides being prettier, is a lot older than their old stone, plus it’s put in better places. They, the Europeans, stick their old joints out in a field or on a rock next to a river and call it the best. I say, anybody can pile up rocks out in a field and just because it was done a long time ago when they didn’t have anything better to do anyway, doesn’t make it the coolest. But you take those Anasazi guys who had to crawl up sheer cliffs holding their rocks in their teeth so they could hang on with both hands and make something like this, well it makes me proud to be an American.

So the next time you see one of those glossy brochures saying “Come on over , we got really old stuff to look at” I say, “Hey! look right here in our own backyard. Our old stuff is neater and probably older and you don’t have to go through customs with them dumping your bag out so they can look through your stuff either”.

There’s old stuff in practically every state in the Union. Even in Wisconsin where I’m from we had an old bar that had been around since the 1930’s called the ‘Blue Side of Nowhere’ where you could get a hamburger and a shot and a beer and a fist fight for under five  bucks!  Remember we got history and some old things that were ‘Made In America’ long before those uppity Europeans made theirs and thought they were so high and mighty. And if you think about it they don’t have one old thing that was ‘Made in America’, that’s got to tell you something right there. Just because their accents sound cool in the movies doesn’t make them any better than us, except for maybe Jean Paul Belmondo, and Dame Judi Dench because she was so good in Sky fall, and Jean Reno in The Professional but that doesn’t make up for all those years of listening to their bragging about how old everything was there. It helps some, but not enough. Plus you’ve got to remember some of those people thought that Jerry Lewis was funny. How can you take them seriously?

So before you get sucked in by some fancy brochure trying to lure you over to Europe to look at their supposedly old stuff, think about our old stuff right here in the good ol’ USA and spend those Eurodollars where they’ll do some good.