Avenging the Owl

by Melissa Hart

  She pointed at two big rust-colored birds side by side on a perch in another mew. “Red-tailed hawks,” she said. “Both female, inseparable.”

  She marched me down past even more mews, through a wooden gate and then another, and we stopped at a little blue-roofed building. She opened a screen door and led me into a room. “The clinic,” she said. “We prepare food here and treat birds in there.” She pointed through another screen door at a room with a tall metal examination table. From another room, I heard a man’s voice saying something about fresh rabbits for the eagles.

  A smell assaulted my nostrils, cold and raw like fresh meat. Syringes and scissors littered the clinic’s countertop. Metal pie pans smeared with blood and feathers crowded the sink. On one shelf, I saw a tray full of yellow baby chicks, all dead. On another, a plate of lifeless mice—brown bodies lined up like sausages. Only the desk was clear—just a computer, keyboard, and a sleeping bundle of black and brown feathers. Uncaged.

  My heart stopped.

  “This is Hermes.” Minerva clucked her tongue against her teeth.

  Instantly, the bundle leaped to its feet. Talons shone black against an Astroturf-covered two-by-four. Feathers rose into horns on the bird’s bobbing head, and I found myself face-to-face with my archenemy: a great horned owl.

  “I can’t work here,” I said and bolted out the door.

  CHAPTER TWO

  OWLS = DEATH

  WHOO-hoo-oo-oo-oo-WHOO-WHOO!

  The sound yanked my hair on end. I sprinted blindly down a path and fell over a log. Minerva found me slumped on a bench beside a rusty windmill, nursing a bloody toenail and two scraped knees.

  “What’re you doing?” With her chest all puffed out, she looked like one of her raptors. I stared at the owls on her green sweatshirt. Different kinds of owls, all with round sinister eyes staring into mine.

  “I hate birds!” I hurled a rock, and it rolled through the tangle of blackberries to a trail far below.

  Minerva examined a tiny black and white bird twittering on the branch of some white-berried bush. She reached into her pocket and tossed a handful of seed in its direction. Then she said, “Lots of people dislike owls. Some Native Americans regard them as bad luck. In fact, tribes in the Northwest believe owls call out the names of people who are about to die.”

  “Owls equal death,” I muttered. “I could’ve told you that.”

  A montage of scenes whirled through my head. Huge, flapping wings. Razor-sharp beak. Bloody talons. The crack of a single gunshot. I dug my palms into my eyes.

  “They don’t always equal death, although great horned owls are at the top of the food chain.” The bench trembled as Minerva sat down beside me. “Anyhow, I heard about your kitten. I’m sorry.”

  I snorted. People always say they’re sorry when a stranger dies or ends up in the hospital. I hate that. No one but me knew how my kitten loved to snuggle under the covers, purring against my chest, or how she woke me every morning practically tearing the skin off my ear with her scratchy tongue. No one but me knew that at eight o’clock every night, she chased the blue plastic ring from a milk carton across my bedroom floor and batted it around for an hour like a fluffy gray and white soccer forward.

  How could Minerva be sorry?

  The long, sad wail of a train drifted up from the city below. Minerva’s eyes followed a black and yellow butterfly floating above the flowers. We had monarchs in my old town, orange as the kites my friends and I used to fly at the beach before my parents sold our house and forced me to move with them into a trailer in Oregon.

  Minerva shifted her gaze from the butterfly to me. “Owls seldom kill cats unless they’re desperate for food.” She pursed her lips. “Or unless someone’s invaded their territory.”

  I snorted again. My parents’ tin can trailer didn’t invade anyone’s territory. There were billions of places a great horned owl could’ve found a meal on their new property. But what was the point of arguing? My kitten was dead.

  And I was here.

  A gray squirrel raced up a tree beside us and bumped into a brown squirrel. They cursed at each other in Rodent Speak, practically pelting each other with acorns. They reminded me of the cartoons my father used to write in Hollywood—of a life that seemed so far away now.

  I hurled another rock down the hill. “Watch out, squirrels. You’re owl bait.”

  Minerva studied me. “Your social worker sent you to the raptor center for a reason.”

  I lifted my chin and met her eyes.

  She reached out and touched the bandage on my wrist, tapping it gently with her own wrapped-up index finger. “I’d like you to come and meet Hermes properly. I’ll put him in his inside mew.”

  It was a command, not an invitation. Minerva stood and reached to help me up from the bench, but I ignored her hand, pretending to be fascinated with the mew beside me. Inside sat two tiny owls, motionless as stuffed toys on a branch.

  “Pygmy owls.” Minerva clucked her tongue at them. “Our smallest. They camouflage beautifully with that oak perch….”

  The brownish pygmies were smaller than my hand. Still, their talons looked sharp enough to pluck out my eyes like the crows did to that teacher-woman in The Birds.

  I turned my back on the mew and stalked across the grass.

  “Well?” Edgar cried. “Ha ha ha ha!”

  I glared at the creepy crow. “Save it, featherbrain.”

  Outside the death room, Minerva pulled on an elbow-length leather glove. “Wait here,” she instructed. Through the window, I saw her nudge the glove under Hermes’s feet on the desk. Now, I could see the brown leash clipped from his ankle to the perch. She unclipped it, and the owl hopped up onto her wrist. I held my breath, sure the bird would rip her face in two. But Hermes just sat there.

  Minerva guided him to a perch inside a small mew against the wall, then shut the door. “You can come in now, Solo.”

  I shuffled inside, eyes glued on Hermes. He stared back at me, bobbing his head from side to side, twin head-feather tufts on high alert.

  “Why’s he doing that? Does he want to eat me?”

  Minerva shook her head. “It’s called motion parallax. He pins you in his vision by keeping what’s behind you moving. You’re right—it’s a hunting technique, but you’re too big to be prey. Try it yourself.”

  She held up her finger. “Pretend your finger’s a mouse. Stare at it, and keep it still, then move your head from side to side. See how this helps you to focus on your finger?”

  She was watching, so I had to try. The trick reminded me of seagulls floating on the ocean back home. The water all around them moved, but the birds looked perfectly still.

  “Why’s Hermes here?” I demanded. “He looks healthy.”

  “Injured wing.” Minerva picked up a brown and white striped feather from the desk and ran her finger over it. “He fell out of the nest when he was a baby and broke his wing, so he can’t fly properly. He helps with education when school groups come to visit. Which reminds me, I’d better get moving. The kids’ll be here any minute.”

  The phone jangled across the office. Hermes let out a hoot and flapped his wings. One of them dangled crookedly at his side.

  Phone tucked between her ear and shoulder, Minerva opened the mew door and set a pink tennis shoe inside. Instantly, Hermes pounced and gripped the thing in both feet, attacking it with his beak. He ripped off a piece of pink canvas and tossed it aside. I cringed.

  “Injured hawk?” Minerva said into the phone. “Near which highway? We’ll send someone.” She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “I’ve gotta call volunteers to pick up a hawk. Change the poopy newspaper in Hermes’s mew and give him a snack.”

  “A snack?” I looked around for some Goldfish crackers or an apple. Minerva pointed to a plate on top of the refrigerator. In the center lay a dead white mouse.

  “You’re kidding, right?” My stomach went belly-up. My best friend, Rajen, had two pet mice back home—cute little guys with
pink wriggling noses and whiskers that tickled your face. “Gross! ” No way was I touching a dead mouse.

  Minerva hung up the phone. “Is it any grosser than people eating sausage and steak and fried chicken? Life feeds on life, Solo. Get used to it.”

  I shook my head. “My mom’s gone vegetarian. We eat tofu.”

  “Well, Hermes is an obligate carnivore. He has to eat meat, or he’ll die.” She handed me the plate and peered into my face.

  “You’re not scared of a three-pound bird, are you?” She picked up the phone again and turned her back on me. “Hi, Lucas. It’s Minerva. We’ve got an injured hawk….”

  I peered into the mew. Slimy black and white bird poop dotted the newspapers. Hermes sat on his tennis shoe, another fragment of the canvas in his killer beak.

  “Hurry up, Solo. We’ve got a lot to do this morning.” Minerva tossed me her leather glove. “That’s an order.”

  I thought of what the judge had told me that day in court: Next time, you won’t be so lucky.

  Heart pounding, I pulled on the glove and opened the mew door, yanked out the newspapers, and slammed the door shut. Even with my breath held, the tall metal trash can smelled like death. Among crumpled newspapers, I saw a pair of orange chicken feet with no body.

  I squinted at the mouse on the plate. Somehow, I had to get it into the mew without losing my hand or my breakfast. Minerva sat on the desk with her back to me, chattering away. I snatched up the plate and some newspapers, opened the mew door, and shoved in the stack of newspaper with the rodent on top.

  Bam! I closed the door just in time. Hermes hooted and jumped to his perch, ear tufts jutting. He stared down at his mouse on the messy pile of newspaper and clacked his beak.

  “He’ll sit up there a while and contemplate his snack.” Minerva stepped toward the door. “Then he’ll eat it. Lucas may bring in an injured hawk—help him with whatever he needs. I’m gonna gulp down a quick bowl of soup myself before the school group gets here. That’s where I live.” She pointed out the window at a building beside the clinic.

  “Wonderful.” I poked at a white splotch with my hand still hot in her glove. Owl poop on my shirt.

  “It is wonderful. I get to listen to owls hooting all night. You can fold these towels.” Minerva nodded at a basket on the counter piled high with white towels. “Put ’em in the treatment room cabinets when you’re finished. You’ll see a lot of plastic crates draped with sheets in that room. We cover them so recently injured birds can have peace and quiet.”

  I looked at the clock. 10:40 a.m. Three hours before I could escape. “You’re leaving me alone in here?”

  “The birds are all enclosed. Besides, I wouldn’t leave you if I didn’t think you could handle it. Thanks for being here, Solo.”

  I rolled my eyes. Why thank me? I had to work here—the judge said so.

  Minerva walked out of the office, then turned back and pulled a paperback from a stack near the desk. She dropped it on top of my backpack. “You might like this.”

  I looked at the cover—a great horned owl hunched on a fallen log, glaring at the camera. No way was I reading that book.

  Minerva left me then, and I got busy with the towels, one eye on Hermes in case he decided to attack. But he just kept staring at his mouse like he wished it would wake up and give him a chase.

  Suddenly, an eerie wail drifted out of the treatment room.

  WHOO-hoo-oo-oo-oo-WHOO-WHOO!

  Then, Hermes started bobbing his head like crazy. Goosebumps prickled my back and shivered down my arms. I twisted a towel between my hands. Minerva had ordered me to put them in some cabinet in the treatment room. I folded and refolded, stalling for time.

  I’ll run in, dump the towels, and get out. She said they were all locked up …

  WHOO-hoo-oo-oo-oo-WHOO-WHOO!

  With my arms full of terry cloth rectangles, I creaked through the screen door and tiptoed into the dim room, found the cabinet marked TOWELS, and stuffed them in. Something rustled inside the biggest plastic crate. The sheet didn’t quite cover the door, and I glimpsed two round yellow eyes peering at me through the wire.

  Another owl. It lunged for me, slamming against metal.

  WHOO-hoo-oo-oo-oo-WHOO-WHOO!

  This time, the hooting came from the clinic.

  I ran out of the treatment room and stared at Hermes. He’d forgotten all about his breakfast. Now he stood tall and thin on his perch, calling out to the injured owl.

  My head swam with hooting. I shouldered my backpack and ran for the door. A book hit the ground—the paperback Minerva had given me. I stuffed it inside my pack and fled.

  What am I supposed to do now?

  Minerva had disappeared, probably off eating mouse muffins with peanut butter. Shaking, I slid down to the driveway outside the clinic and leaned against the wall. I reached into my backpack for a photo—a picture of me and Blinky and my best friend, Rajen—all of us in wet suits in front of the Redondo Beach Pier. I turned the photo over and read Rajen’s yellow sticky note.

  Hey, dude.

  The waves rock! We surfed ten-footers today. Blinky says hi. I’m fixing up my tree house. Don’t forget Operation Surf’s Up!

  Your friend,

  Rajen

  I sniffed the photo. I could almost smell the ocean, feel the sun hot on my shoulders, cool blue waves lifting me up and carrying me away from this horrible place.

  WHOO-hoo-oo-oo-oo-WHOO-WHOO! called the owl from the treatment room, and Hermes answered. I stood up and peered through the window into the clinic. Sunlight pushed through the miniblinds, striping the room with shadowy bars. The owls kept hooting back and forth. Their cries twisted in my chest and caught in my throat.

  All at once, I knew what they were saying.

  I want to go home.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SAY GOOD-BYE TO HOLLYWOOD

  Labels are important. They show you where to file things in your head so you can stay organized. “Owls” get filed under DEATH. File “Fathers” under CRAZY. “Kids” go into the file marked POWERLESS.

  In The Blob, two teenagers try to warn everyone that a giant mass of jelly from another planet is murdering humans, but no one listens to them. By the time people realize the kids are telling the truth, half the town is dead. No one can believe a couple of teens could be heroes.

  “You’re going to be a hero, just like your namesake,” Mom used to tell me. I loved that story about how, when Mom was a kid, her mother took her to see Star Wars at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, and she fell in love with the hero, Han Solo. And since Dad’s last name is Hahn, she thought it would be cute to name me Solo.

  Solo Hahn—can you believe it? What Mom forgot is that “Solo” gets filed under ALONE … Solitary. I’m nobody’s hero. Still, good thing she liked Star Wars instead of some other movie from her childhood. Otherwise, my friends might be calling me E. T.

  My parents make no sense, really. If they were characters in one of my screenplays, they’d have tons of asides, talking right to the camera so the audience would know what they were thinking while their son wandered around clueless.

  Here’s what my father said to me one Saturday last May, right as I was walking out the door with my surfboard:

  “Solo, we’re moving to Oregon. Pack up your necessities, and leave all superfluous frivolities behind.”

  “What?”

  “Contemplate your belongings.” Dad shuffled down the hall in his squashed leather slippers. “Decide what you can’t live without.”

  “Wait! What the heck are you talking about?”

  Dad had studied creative writing in college. Big words and bigger ideas flooded his sentences. I had to wade through a whole sea of them before I finally understood three things:

  #1. My father was a mess. For a month, he’d been laying around in his striped pajamas, watching old horror movies on his 60-inch flat screen TV. His favorite was Attack of the Killer Tomatoes—these three crazy guys launch a siege agains
t a bunch of fruit that’s been eating people and pets. One morning, Dad appeared on the beach with a robe wrapped around him and told Mom and me, just in from surfing, that even though he brought home mammoth paychecks, he was sick of writing cartoons.

  “But I can’t afford to follow my heart,” he told us. “Novelists don’t make money unless they’re that Da Vinci Code guy.”

  We thought it was a phase until that night, when he got into Mom’s Corvette and tried to leave us. We foiled his escape plan; he countered by quitting his job.

  “I thought you couldn’t afford to follow your heart,” I said.

  His eyes got all spacey then. “Maybe …” From the deck of his bedroom, he stared out toward the ocean. “Maybe I can’t afford not to.”

  That’s when I knew he’d gone crazy. He informed us that he’d decided to devote his time to writing a novel about Japanese internment during World War II because his parents spent a year locked up and he wanted to “honor the memory of their struggle.”

  #2. He got my mother to quit her job as a history teacher at El Camino College. “Don’t look at me like that, Solo,” she said. “We have enough in savings to live on for a year. We’ll be fine.”

  Right after that, she tossed a half-full box of Hostess cupcakes and a can of grape Kool-Aid mix into the trash. When I asked why she’d glugged a whole liter of Coke down the kitchen sink, she told me, “Sugar causes anxiety, and your father’s had all he can stand.”

  #3. My parents put our two-story beach house up for sale so they could buy an acre of land and a double-wide trailer a thousand miles north in the middle of Oregon, an hour away from an ocean so cold the fish freeze. Dad showed me a picture of our new “house.” It looked like a can of Spam.

  “It’s sixteen hours away from Redondo Beach!” I hollered.

  He nodded. “Exactly.”

  Then, I understood one more thing. I was really, really mad. If I were a character in one of my father’s cartoons, steam would’ve spouted from my ears. My hair would’ve burst into flames. My eyeballs would’ve popped out of their sockets and bounced around on the floor.