OPINION: Owls in the family

When I was a boy, my favorite book was “Owls in the Family,” by the Canadian author Farley Mowat. The main characters in this book were a pair of great horned owls named Weeps and Wol who the book’s protagonist, “Billy,” found and brought home with him one day as pets.

As a small boy, I was much like Billy.

I knew where every owl nest was within a 10-mile radius of my home. Each spring, I would hike through the rolling hills of central California, meticulously locating and cataloguing which nests were empty and which ones were once again home to a pair of great horned owls.

During this period in my life, on three separate occasions, I’d return to a particular site for a wellness check only to find one of the owlet’s seemingly abandoned on the ground beneath the nest. This usually occurred when there were more than two owlets being cared for. So like Billy, I’d take the orphaned creature home with me.

Usually, after a week or so of hissing and snapping at me, the little ingrate would warm to my offerings of fresh beef heart. By the first month’s end of our new relationship, the small creature would be happily riding around on my shoulder or walking after me around the yard. Later, after fully fledging, my owl still preferred walking — or, when the opportunity presented itself, would perch itself on the back of my pet goat “Socrates,” as the goat tagged along after us when we disappeared into the hills after some new adventure.

Of the three owls I was to eventually bring home, none were ever kept caged. By the summer’s end, they would spend the days loosely hanging around our home, but come the night, they would begin to venture off into their nocturnal world. By winter’s end, they would be gone, back to where they belonged.

My owls all went by one name. “Morton Hootsworth.” So powerful was my connection to these birds they remain a talisman to me to this day.

Remembering back when I once built an owl’s nest and deeply missing this animal’s company, two years ago I purchased a shrimp pot. For the next month, I began a painstaking process of weaving willow branches into the pot’s meshed sides, then slowly filled the pot’s interior. I say painstaking because I started this project in the middle of winter, when the most usable willow twigs to be found were frozen solid under a thick blanket of Homer snow. One evening while I was working on this project, my wife poked her head into the garage and asked me why a shrimp pot was resting upside down on our garage floor full of sticks. “I’m building an owl nest,” I replied. “Yeah, right,” she quipped, “like an owl is really going to nest in a shrimp pot.”

After finishing the nest’s main body I then wove into the cup of the nest several large clumps of Icelandic wool, then finished off the remaining hollow with a matting of combed qiviut. Next, I selected a tree to place my nest in and, with the help of a few friends, managed to hoist it up and place it where, if I were an owl, I’d want to be. I was also mindful to mount the nest in a position where I could peek into it with a decent pair of binoculars from my house.

My family and friends all had a good laugh at me — for two years, mind you, as my nest remained empty. That lasted until this spring, when I was finally able to remove the “tenants wanted” sign.

I have named the two raptors that now occupy the nest Weeps and Wol. Weeps has now been on her eggs for almost three weeks. Yesterday, she was watching me watch her with her very large and fierce-looking yellow eyes. At night, when I can no longer view Weeps roosting, I hear them both instead calling to each other. Their soft hootings fill the night.

After a long hiatus of 60-some-odd years, the reclusive Hootsworths are back in my life, and maybe even in a few other lives as well. But, even more important, once again I have eyes back on what really made me tick as a young person in the first place.

And what better place is there to be in one’s life?

Pete Garay is a state-licensed marine pilot who lives in Homer with his wife and three children. His hobbies include fishing, gardening and oil painting.

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