By Janay Garrick
“You here for the owls?” the man flings open his Ford truck’s white door, his accent, southern. “Damn things. Up all hours of the night. Goddamn neighbor,” he points across the street at three old oak trees where them damn things live. “She puts out half a rotisserie chicken every night on her back deck. Keeps ‘em around.”
I, myself, am pleased with the goddamn neighbor, whoever she is. A Barred Owl baby above my head just now. Black-eyed, close-set, mottled gray peeping down at me. The baby moves her head elliptically right, then left. Clockwise then counterclockwise. She’s hip hop, she’s feather and flow—she’s got some bounce to her ounce. Delightful! How could anyone possibly call her, Damn Thing?
Baby Owl practices the short sprint, the fly-hop from oak to oak. She lands, at times, too close to a vertical branch and hasn’t the room to retract her wing. It’s clear: she’s no idea how long those things are, nor of what they are capable. Her wing scrapes the branch, she tilts left, tilts right, but does not fall. She wobble-walks, she side steps like a country-line dancer. Look at her feathered down! Her silver ballet skirt made of tulle.
From the family of Typical Owls, Barred Owl’s call is commonplace, a loud “who-cooks-for-you” most frequently heard at night. No wonder the man can’t sleep, Who-Cooks-For-You carrying on like she does—all night—like some 1960s, bra-burning feminist. I picture the man in the thralls of two a.m. pillow-plumping sleep, thrashing, kicking straight then jackknifing, then straight-as-a-board and cursing. Lots of cursing. This pleases me enormously. Barred Owl, she’s done her do. Sometimes birders say her call sounds like this: who-cooks-for-you-all. She’s real southern.
I strain my neck, tilting toward the treetops. It’s dusk dark. Where are the rest of them? I wonder. He said this was a family of seven. The no-see-ums pinch, yip, irritate. I swat, smack, ignore. They persist.
The Barred Owl is nocturnal. She hunts at night. When agitated, or defending her territory or her babies, she sounds like a French Bulldog. Her bark ascending, rising into a hoo-wah, loud and drawn out. This is a Big Old Deal. Ruckus raising. Her big, flat-faced, blunt-headed bark; her blunt-tongued, bar-breasted feathers in a ruffle. Do not invade her territory. She is revved up.
I look up to her.
Lightning’s heat has vaporized the water inside the oak tree, but the steam does not blow the trunk or the limbs apart. There, Barred Owl sets down wing and pulls up perch. She grafts herself into tree and limb, homemaking where wind has done its damage and lightning has flung its fiery tail. She is strong and resolute. She thinks outside the box, the bars, and barriers—what the oak tree calls disaster, Barred Owl calls home.
Janay Garrick writes from her grandmother’s pink secretary desk in Northern California. Influenced by the poetry of witness and resistance writing, Janay desires her art to speak back to the centers of power. Her work has appeared in Narrative, TriQuarterly, Eclectica, and Memoir Land among others. Connect with her: janaygarrick.com.