That Thing With Feathers

I woke up to overhead scratching outside at 5:25 am last week. From her pillow on the floor, Maria’s head shot up, too.

The noise moved along the eaves, followed by a persistent clawing at the wood.

I knew this sound from two years ago when a snowy owl slept in our attic. When the carpenter removed a rotten wood corbel to make a replacement, upper access inside our house was possible. From out there on a branch, that owl watched, believed, and risked the unknown.

For several nights, I’d hear the wriggling, feathered body squeezing through the opening, inch by inch, and then scurrying across the floor above my head.

When the carpenter climbed up to place the new corbel, the noise alerted the sleeping owl, and he escaped, nearly knocking the man over. He pointed out the owl’s location in the tree, but I never saw him on the leafy branches. When the bird returned on consecutive nights, I’d hear him scratching where the hole had been.

Back then, I never got up to see him. I thought there’d be a next time.

Time passed. No more scratching. He moved on.

Over time, I convinced myself it never happened. Faith based on something you haven’t seen is a slippery thing easily reasoned away.

Then I found the feather. Then another feather. Then beneath our huge spruce, I found a fish eye. We live near a river, but that fish didn’t walk to our yard.

When I encountered an acquaintance who knew about the owl, she announced, “Karen, I saw your owl.” He’d flown away by the time she got her camera.

No picture proof.

Right after that, Cliff and I were driving down the highway along the river. I looked into a cluster of trees and cried,” There he is!” only to begin second guessing myself. Cliff patted my hand and said, “We’re going to believe that was him.”

I think about that beautiful bird all the time.

So when I heard him last week, I went to the window, but the angle of glass and roof didn’t cooperate. If it hadn’t been snowing with subzero temperatures, I might have ventured out.

Increased snowy owls sightings are truly happening. You can read online about the 2018 snowy owl irruption along the Great Lakes. Their reasons for southern migration are complicated and mysterious, according to the experts. Because Milan is not far from Lake Erie, I have reason to believe they’re nearby.

All kinds of mysterious things exist even though I haven’t seen them.

Apparently, NASA’s JunoCam revealed pictures in 2017 of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a possible 10,000-mile-wide storm on the planet. Despite the fact that I didn’t know it was there, it was real nevertheless.

I don’t believe in plenty of things–things that other people insist are real.

I just know what Maria and I heard last week. I don’t know what she thinks, but I believe that snowy owl returned to our house where he’d once been safe from the cold.

Poet Emily Dickinson wrote: “Hope” is the thing with feathers – /That perches in the soul –

For me it’s a snowy owl.

Same thing. Pretty much.