The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar

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by Windrow, Martin


  In the meantime, as badly as I wanted to stay at home, I realized that there was no point in searching for Mumble in the trees of the garden and the nearby fields during daytime. She would be tucked into the thickest cover she could find, sleeping through the daylight hours; I could go out late that evening, and try to tempt her into calling and showing herself. So I went to work; but I couldn’t concentrate, and in the afternoon I left London early. It was only when I got home that I made a really thorough search of the aviary. I had, of course, checked out her enclosed hutch that morning, but I had not thought to comb through the thick, tangled, knee-deep greenery on the ground.

  And so it was that I found her; she was lying face down, wings and tail outspread, almost hidden in the middle of a clump of daffodils. There was not a mark on her, and she and the flowers around her were completely undisturbed – which again argued for a human rather than an animal intruder. All the evidence pointed to her having died instantaneously, in mid-wingbeat, from a heart attack (of which mature raptors, with their high-protein diet, are always at risk). If any strange human had come inside the aviary she would have flown around in frenzied rage and excitement, and it was plausible that this could have stopped her fast-beating little heart in the blink of an eye.

  I picked her up and carried her indoors; her head flopped loosely, and when I held her softness to my face I found that I had a clogged throat and stinging eyes.

  * * *

  Over the next couple of days I wondered what to do with my owl. At first I considered putting her in the freezer and finding a vet qualified to do an autopsy, but there seemed no point – clearly, she had died neither of disease nor of violence. I remembered that many years previously I had wondered idly whether I should have her stuffed and mounted when she died, but now I was revolted by the idea. What would I be left with? A lifeless puppet – a mockery of everything she had been, and a constant reminder of my loss. The thought of simply throwing her body away never entered my mind, and nor could I bear the thought of burying her – what does a bird have to do with the cold, heavy earth?

  In the end, I gave Mumble a Cheyenne funeral. I tucked her into the high fork of a leafy tree, with her face towards the hills and sky. The notebook reminds me that, for some reason, at the last moment I felt moved to tuck a few wildflowers around her. I stroked her soft feathers for the last time, pulled the concealing ivy over her, and left her there. When I got home I found myself not just choked up, but sobbing. Before that day I truly don’t believe that I had wept aloud in twenty years, and I never have since.

  * * *

  A wise old friend of mine once told me that he conceived of our relationship with animals in this way. Mankind has a ‘vertical soul’, capable of touching all levels of existence – from the satisfaction of animal appetites to the intellectual exploration of distant galaxies or the highest flights of artistic creativity, and (since my friend Angus was a believer in a consciousness that survives physical death) that it travelled onwards and upwards thereafter. Animals, he said, have ‘horizontal souls’, in touch as we never can be with every manifestation of life at their own level, feeling and responding to all the tides of which we are unaware – but incapable of upwards movement.

  Many ancient folk-mythologies speak of a time ‘when we all lived in the forest, and people could talk to the animals’. Some pockets of humanity – for instance, among the aboriginal peoples of Australia – seem to retain some sense of what it was like to live at that crossing-point of the vertical with the horizontal axis of consciousness, and to be, at least to some degree, aware of both. Angus believed that it is to our sick cost that the great majority of humanity has lost that horizontal awareness entirely, and that even minimal contact with other living creatures and the elemental tides that govern them is beneficial for our mental and emotional health. I did not share his whole belief system, but in that respect I instinctively agreed with him, and my belief was greatly strengthened by my experience of living closely with a wild creature.

  Since my childhood I have been fond of both cats and dogs, but before I lived with Mumble I had never had cause to give much thought to my feelings about animals. During the years that we were together her company enriched my life; it saved me from too much self-absorption, and increased my daily pleasure to a degree that I would never have imagined possible. If, from this distance of time, I am to make a rough-and-ready analysis of my feelings about her, I have to start from my feelings about life as a whole (please don’t be alarmed – I’m an Englishman, after all, and I shall be brief).

  Like, I imagine, the majority of other people of my age in Britain, I was brought up in the Church of England, but drifted away from it in adolescence. I am not a practising or even a believing Christian; nevertheless, there is undeniably a ‘God-shaped hole’ in my feelings, and I regret that I am unable to believe in a life after death. This regret is not based solely on my honest envy of the evident comfort and strength that believers draw from their faith.

  That’s part of it, certainly; but in my case, the regret also comes from a vague feeling that in a universe where nothing disappears utterly, but is only transmuted into something else, there ought to be some less wasteful end for something as richly complex as a human personality than simply switching it off and turning its container into leafmould or ashes. It appears to take most of us about seventy years to gain a workable understanding of human life, and to reconcile ourselves to its limits (if we ever do). For that achievement to be thrown away unused, while its container is recycled as fuel for the great engine of physical life, seems a bit spendthrift.

  Christians are clearly pretty confused about animals. The hard line is that, unlike us, animals have no souls, and so are simply provided as subservient companions – often luckless ones – for us to interact with during our own moral journey towards judgement and an afterlife. (However, some believing Christians have declared that since a Heaven without animals would not be heavenly, it therefore cannot be.) Whatever First Cause you believe in – whether intelligent creation or chemical accident – logically all sentient life must be the product of the same prime event, and thus all living things must be connected. We travel in company; and a shared journey that divides at the moment of physical death – with one line leading to mere leafmould and the other going on to some higher destination – seems to me too much like special pleading. It smacks of bureaucratic rules devised by a rather self-important and pettifogging mind, and it offends my sense of the scale of creation.

  Since Mumble and I were evidently both warm-blooded parts of some shared continuum, formed by the same processes and subject to the same basic drives, then it surely follows that either we were both heading directly for the leafmould, or that both of us had a further stage of the journey in prospect. I simply cannot feel that I am part of any really fundamental process that excludes her. And if – as seems vastly the more probable – our shared destiny turns out to be oblivion, then I am warmly grateful for the unexpected company of this particularly delightful fellow-traveller.

  * * *

  How might a Tawny Owl have felt about travelling with me?

  The whole subject of what levels of ‘consciousness’ and ‘feelings’ animals are capable of is a notoriously contentious field of free-for-all argument. Behaviourists, ethologists and neurobiologists of various schools each have their own orthodoxies (I am tempted to say ‘ideologies’). Since they cannot agree on a clear definition of terms such as ‘instinct’ and ‘emotion’, there doesn’t even seem to be a common conceptual framework for their enquiries. Not having any kind of scientific grounding myself, I can only try to judge my own observations in the light of common sense.

  We can never know what it actually ‘feels like’ to be another type of animal, let alone a bird. There is a constant temptation to project our own emotions on to animals, so I try to stay on guard against this anthropomorphism. I certainly refuse to use the word ‘love’ in any animal context – it’s too important for t
hat. At least half of Mumble’s walnut-sized brain was a wonderful machine for processing sight and sound, and I can’t believe that there was any room in there for abstract thought or for any but the most rudimentary ‘feelings’.

  But – and for me this is a huge but – she and I evidently enjoyed an individual relationship of some sort, and on her part she gave undeniable signs that it was based not simply on hunger, but on companionship. Tawny Owls are not a gregarious, co-operative species, but they do form long-term pair-bonds. There is a mass of recorded observations to confirm that these pairs demonstrate what dry science will only admit are ‘reinforcement behaviours that reduce stress-hormone levels’, but which in ordinary human terms we can only call affectionate pleasure in each other’s company and touch.

  Mumble’s behaviour showed that as she grew into young adulthood she made a clear distinction between me and other humans: if they came near, she hurled herself into the attack to defend our joint territory. Throughout her life she very often chose, unprompted, to seek my physical closeness, and to positively demand my touch, to which she responded with obvious pleasure. If she was startled when we were together she would come to me automatically, staying until she was calm again. She routinely dozed on my shoulder, paying me the greatest compliment that an animal can – that of trust. She very often preened me, as she would have preened her mate or nestlings, and on occasion she even tried to feed me.

  Rationalize it however you like, that’s an individual relationship – and it’s the kind of bond that I have never enjoyed with any other animal, previously or since. I am not interested in analysing it any further, I am just delighted to remember how very good it felt. Sometimes, all these years afterwards, Mumble still appears in my dreams; and whenever she does, she unfailingly brings a surge of grateful fondness into my mind.

  Mumble at about eleven weeks old. Her wing and tail feathers are fully grown, and her front is starting to show the ‘ermine’ effect, but there is still fluff on her lower body and the back of her head. Her expression, as usual, is one of lively curiosity.

  The arrival of a pigeon on the balcony rail changes Mumble’s expression – over about five seconds – from benign contentment, through suspicion, to her full ‘war face’.

  At about nine weeks old she was still sociable enough for a friend to come in and take photos one summer evening.

  By nine months old she was strictly a one-man owl, and I had to take my own photographs using the bedroom mirror.

  Breakfast time in the flat: Mumble flies down from Germanicus to visit me, and possibly ‘share’ the morning paper.

  Her other favourite perch, on top of the living-room door. Here, she seems to have caught herself something small but crunchable.

  An air-landing assault on something rippable in the kitchen affords a rare glimpse of Mumble’s legs at full stretch.

  During a rare visit to my office, she emerges after exploring behind a row of books.

  Drying out after a bath.

  Shredding a frond ripped from a houseplant.

  Showing off her ‘panels’ of feathers. Note the scapular ‘shawl’ covering her folded wings.

  ‘Pretentious – moi?’ The night Mumble posed with a trophy on the frame of my Dürer print of a young Tawny Owl. As usual, she’s grabbed herself a bit of houseplant; she loved destroying these, and dropping the bits everywhere.

  Emerging from one of her tunnelling games under a spread newspaper. Just visible at bottom left is a ping-pong ball, which she completely ignored after finding that she couldn’t ‘kill it’.

  Mumble grew her feathers in little more than twelve weeks from leaving the egg; in her fuzzy infant suit, here with the blue nictating membranes flipped over her eyes.

  At eleven weeks, giving my signet ring a keen appraisal.

  A cautious approach to the dripping kitchen tap. She would sit under it for several minutes, letting the water fall into her open beak.

  A glass of wine, a cheroot, music, and a contented owl: what more could a man want on a quiet evening at home?

  The Headless Owl: Mumble seen from the front while preening the small of her back. I found her contortions during the grooming process a never-ending source of entertainment.

  Real trees and free-range mice: Mumble in her new home in Sussex. ‘It was not just that her living space was much larger; her surroundings were unimaginably different from her cage on the seventh-floor balcony. For the first time … she found herself at ground level amongst living greenery.’

  Select Bibliography

  Books and journal articles

  Tim Birkhead, Bird Sense: What It’s Like to Be a Bird (Bloomsbury, 2012)

  John A. Burton, Owls of the World: Their Evolution, Structure and Ecology (Peter Lowe, 1973)

  Michael Everett, A Natural History of Owls (Hamlyn, 1977)

  G. J. M. Hirons, ‘The effects of territorial behaviour on the stability and dispersion of Tawny owl (Strix aluco) populations’, in Journal of Zoology, Vol. 1, No. 1 (August 1985), pp. 21–48

  Eric Hosking and Dr Jim Flegg, Eric Hosking’s Owls (Pelham Books, 1982)

  Graham Martin, Birds by Night (Poyzer, 1990)

  H. N. Southern, ‘Natural control of a population of tawny owls’, in Journal of Zoology, Vol. 162, No. 2 (October 1970), pp. 197–285

  H. N. Southern, R. Vaughan and R. C. Muir, ‘The Behaviour of Young Tawny Owls after Fledging’, in Bird Study, 1:3 (1954), pp. 101–110

  John Sparks and Tony Soper, Owls (David & Charles, 1970)

  Paul Thomas, ‘Getting Wise’, in Radio Times (BBC, 22–28 January 1983)

  A. A. Wardhaugh, Owls of Britain and Europe (Blandford Press, 1983)

  Websites

  www.owlpages.com/articles

  www.owls.org

  www.davidnorman.org.uk

  www.javierblasco.arrakis.es

  www.raptorfoundation.org.uk

  Index

  The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.

  anatomy 176–92, 196–201

  air circulation system 181

  beak 186–8

  ears 189–92

  eyes 182–6

  feathers 101, 191, 196–9, 200, 202–3, 205

  skeleton 176–80, 199–201

  wings 100, 101, 201–4

  animals

  feelings of 305–6

  human relationship with 302–3

  taming wild 26–7, 30–31

  Apache warriors 67

  Arab folklore 70

  Archaeopterix 54

  Athene noctua see Little Owl

  Australia 66, 303

  Australopithecus afarensis (‘Lucy’) 55

  Barn Owl (Tyto alba) 60, 62, 63

  characteristics 45–6

  habitat 116

  hearing 122

  population 114–15

  vision 120

  wings 202

  ‘bat-walking’ 247–8

  bathing 164–7, 263

  ‘bating off’ 42–3

  birds

  birds of prey 7, 135, 227

  chickens 187

  European robin 194

  evolution 54–6, 58, 179

  game birds 135

  kiwi 187

  migration 194

  picking up birds 227

  pigeons 119, 187, 194, 195, 289–90

  small birds 282–3

  smell, sense of 187

  starlings 187

  see also species (owls)

  Blakiston’s Fish Owl 60, 62

  blind kills 190

  bones 180

  ‘branching’ behaviour 81, 129

  breathing 181–2

  broody behaviour 168–9

  Brown Owl see Tawny Owl

  cadge 33

  Caesar, Germanicus (bust of) 225–6

  calls see vocal repertoire

  car jour
neys 51, 153–4

  characteristics of owls 59

  Chaucer 70

  China 55, 70

  diet 61–2

  prey animals supply 131

  supplement 150

  Tawny Owl 117–18, 134

  see also feeding

  digestion process 212, 214

  drinking 211

  droppings 77–8, 213–14

  Eagle Owl 60

  ears 189–92

  see also hearing

  earthworms 283

  eggs 47–8, 128

  Elf Owl 60

  Europe, medieval 66

  evolution

  birds 54–6, 58, 179

  humans 56–7

  owls 55–6

  Tawny Owl 56, 58

  excreting waste (slicing) 213–14

  eyes 182–6

  see also vision

  falconry 20, 23–4

  farming 114

  feathers 101, 191, 196–9, 200, 202–3, 205

  feeding

  Mumble 80, 150, 208–211, 243, 252, 253

  Wellington 30, 39, 42

  see also diet

  feet 199–201

  field perches 65

  flight feathers 202–3

  floor-walking 93

  flying 84, 98–101, 169–71, 203

  see also wings

  folklore 65–70

  game birds 135

  games, Mumble’s 142, 158, 162, 223–5

  ghost stories 72–3

  Goldsmith, Oliver 70

  Grass owls 60

  Greece, ancient 65–6

  grooming 216–21

  habitats 60–61, 63–4, 116–17

 

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