Skippy, the Vegan Owl
The bright morning air was still soft, giving the lie to the streaming light that came through the branches of the deciduous mountains that made the homes of seething, teeming life for miles. The atmosphere at late dawn, when the buttery warmth seemed to be hitting the tree trunks at right angles, was like that of a 24-hour factory. Some animals were waking, some were going to sleep, nodding to one another in scant acknowledgement only, too tired or preoccupied to really care that one of the Sneaky Raccoon kits seemed to have gone missing during the night and would have a lot of explaining to do when he was found (usually he could be located consorting with one of the young female foxes, a situation his parents were decidedly Not In Favor Of), or that Stafford the Magnificent Mole was less sour than usual owing to a large stash of grubs he had found shortly before dawn.
Yes, the night’s work had been good, but the food chain was a mucky arrangement all around, and the snag of it was that one animal eating usually resulted in another being eaten. Though this fact had been widely accepted and relations between hunters and hunted had settled into an uneasy truce, there were a few slipped cogs.
High above the paw-traffic, nestled deep in the hearts of the most ancient and sleepy of the elms, the Nightwatch Owl Colony was beginning to doze sleepily. There were strict rules around these parts. Down at first light, up again only when the sun had dipped completely below the horizon and all her rays had dissipated. Then, there was a rigorous schedule of preening, flight routines, and of course, the hunt. They more than most of the other animals were secure in the knowledge that their hard work had earned them a rest. As soon as the wide, lamplike eyes closed, all the owls were asleep.
Almost all of them, that is.
In one of the larger trees, one gray, fluffy lump, indistinguishable from its peers and family, was only biding time. The hollow of the tree filled with the even sounds of somnolent breathing, and at last there was even a resigned rumble from the old Oak himself as he settled his roots deeper into the rich soil that had sustained him and his tenants for a century and relaxed his branches for a nap.
As soon as the deep, woody sound of the tree falling asleep faded away into the morning breeze, one large, yellow eye shot through with an obsidian pupil opened. For a moment, there was no movement. Then the other eye snapped open. Slowly, the small, sleek owl extended a powerful set of talons, lifted the knife-point of his claws clear of the leafy bottom of their eyrie, and walked carefully on the very centers of his feet to the lip of the cave opening. Twisting his head around, he searched the interior to ensure that none of his group showed signs of awakening. Apparently satisfied, he leaned over the worn opening and dropped like a stone.
A stealthy, speedy brown missile, the owl fell silently for what seemed like a long time, the keen eyes that had made his kind the bane of rodents and bugs for the length and breadth of history coolly calculating the distance between himself and the ground. As the forest floor approached, he made a calculated tilt of his body and opened his thick wings up to their full expansion, tilting the inner curve of the feathers down to check his fall. He landed on a fallen log and gripped it firmly with his steely claws. From the noble rise and fall of his ponderous eyelids to the curve of the talons, now sunk into the rotten bark, he was a speedy, stealthy killing maching.
“’Ey there, mate, gerroff me nest! I’ll proper fettle ye!” A tiny, cheeping voice had the effect of a stiff blow to the smooth-feathered bird. Clumsily, he fell to one side and skitter-hopped over the ground.
“Gosh, I’m sorry…I…I didn’t know you had settled in….just there…please forgive…” The powerful beak parted and stammered an apology. As the stuttering and nervous fluffing of the once-smooth feathers continued, a tiny brown head appeared, studded with two soft little black eyes. The delicate lips parted in a grin, revealing two impossibly small but perfectly shaped and situated incisors.
“Nay, mate! I’m ‘avin’ you on!” The field mouse smoothly exited his chink to stand on the log, slapping his knee with a pink little paw. Skippy fluffed every feather on his body in an attempt to look bigger and at the same time hide his ruffled dignity. Ringo the mouse, however, knew that he had nettled his friend enough and made a great effort to bring his shrill, almost inaudible laughter under control.
“Can we go now? Much more of this and you’ll wake up my grandmum. I doubt she’d think you were so funny.”
“Roit, well, settle yer quills. Can’t blame me for ‘avin’ a bit o’ fun! There’s not many an owl wot would fall over like that for a little rotter like me!”
“Next time,” Skippy grumbled, “You’re getting a peck on the head.”
Ringo knew Skippy was blowing smoke, but cleared his throat and tried to be serious. “There’s a bloody great meetin’ in the meadow. If we ‘urry we may make it yet.” The agile little paws scampered across the log, indicating the direction with a twitch of his whiskers. Skippy spread his wings and lifted from the peaty ground and the talons, which could have crushed the little mouse without effort, gingerly enclosed the fawn-colored body and carried him into the air.
Skippy had always been what his parents termed “a bit queer.” From his infancy he had been constantly distracted, flapping when he was meant to be still, busily examining a patch of colorful moss when the Grand Watchman was pontificating, pulling out one of his own feathers to complete a pretty arrangement of stones and flower petals. His sire and dam were both extraordinary hunters, but Skippy had always quailed at the idea of actually swallowing a mouse. The thought of stopping a tender little buzzing heart, tearing flesh from bones, and swallowing what had once been a living creature was enough to make Skippy quail and have to go to bed with a headache.
Eventually, the other owls had given up their exhortations that Skippy learn to eat properly, and learn to hunt, and for goodness sake stop pulling out your feathers so you can see how pretty they are! They didn’t ask how Skippy stayed alive, they didn’t ask why he was always so weary and napped while the others were hunting. Even his grandmum had downscaled her arguments to the occasional exasperated “Really, Skipford!” Skippy’s name wasn’t really Skipford, but he supposed grandmum found it beneath her dignity to actually enunciate his proper name.
Skippy started out by eating fresh carrion and the occasional egg, though he didn’t much like it and usually wept at the thought of the chick that would never be. Eventually, the burden of guilt and the thought of what was going into his stomach became too much and he began casting about for other forms of sustenance. That was how he had met Ringo. The little mouse had caught him eyeing some bright red berries one day, wondering how they would taste. He was in the process of a cautious nibble when the shrill little squeak stopped him.
“’Ey there, wot’s the idea? Think ye te shift yerself? Come away from that bush roit sharpish! Air ye daft?”
Skippy squeezed his orb eyes shut, then shook his head back and forth. The voice, painfully high to his acute hearing, was rendered further incomprehensible by the rich accent. No one was quite sure where Ringo had learned to talk like this. His parents, family, and indeed all his friends spoke without a trace of lilt. But Ringo never accounted for this or any other habit he made—including the habit of hanging about with an owl.
Ringo had taught him about the forest vegetation and how to use it to stay alive. Of course, Skippy needed more bulk intake than the little rodent, but now he could avoid poisonous things, find grains, dig up juicy roots and fronds, crack open pithy plants. His favorite was the tender little fiddleheads that grew around the bases of mature ferns.
But now they were on a different mission. The “meeting” Ringo had referred to was actually a gathering of different amicable species to bring in grass grains for the winter. By studiously watching for predators, Skippy earned his rather mighty (by mouse standards) portion of cold weather rations.
Skippy placed Ringo down gently on the harvest field. Placing a paw behind one ear, Ringo threw off a cheeky salute and consigned his friend to the post; a hopping patrol of the field’s perimeter followed by a sweeping aerial inspection of the field.
As the day wore on and Skippy grew tired, hot, and hungry, he began to consider hunting about for a snack. Surely there would be some tasty shoots, or maybe a few fragrant herbs worth laying his beak on. The mice were mostly concealed right now and anyway, most of the predators that would have them for a snack were asleep by this time of day. And there were other watchmen in the woods-the kindly deer, the nosy woodpeckers, even a butterfly or two could be counted on to flash its wings in warning if trouble appeared.
Flexing his wings a few times to relax, Skippy slid under a fallen log in search of that particularly tender, bright green kind of shoot that only came out of rotting vegetation. There was nothing of the kind, but something else caught his eye…something smooth, round, and brown thrusting up from a fragile white stem. It was a mushroom. Ringo had always said mushrooms should not be trifled with, but Skippy had always thought they looked lovely-so moist and soft and clean-looking. And Ringo had never said they were out-and-out poisonous. Perhaps they’d be worth a taste. Surreptitiously looking from one side to another, Skippy shuffled out from under the log, looking remarkably like a chicken with a glandular difficulty he was sure. But stealthily he approached the little outcropping of mushrooms, slowly extended his beak, and took a nip.
The flavor was everything he hoped-rich, moist, and as good as the earth it grew in. There, now even if he became ill surely that one bite wouldn’t kill him.
But as Skippy held the shard of mushroom in his beak and ran his tongue back and forth over it thoughtfully, he began to feel very strange. It wasn’t just that the forest had taken on a new hue of color, or that he himself suddenly felt very chromatic. No, there was an emotional vibration in the air. Skippy gradually began to feel that there was something watching him intently, and there was another impression, one that Skippy had grown familiar with from his parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and indeed just about every owl he had ever known…it was the impression that someone, or something, strongly and emphatically disapproved of him.
As the feeling grew, Skippy became more still. The colors around him slowly began to smear and swirl, and little happy flowers came to do strange dances around him, but the only part of him that still moved was his tongue, back and forth across the juicy little bit of mushroom.
Then, a voice, strangely different from any he had ever heard, rumbled out of the ground in front of him. Perhaps rumbling wasn’t the best descriptor, but the voice was so slow and deep that it seemed to make Skippy’s very skull vibrate.
“’Ey, wot’s the big idea?” It was a thick accent, just like Ringo’s, but lower pitched by far and much slower spoken. Skippy was too busy finding the source of the voice to notice that he suddenly had to close one eye to still the swirling of the brightly-colored forest around him.
“Who…whooo is talking?”
“Oh, who who who! Is that all you owls knaw how to say? There ye stand wi’ a bit o’ me hat in yer bloomin’ beak, an’ all ye can say is ‘who?’”
At first, Skippy firmly ruled out the thought that the mushroom was speaking to him. It was simply impossible. The elms and oaks took decades to learn how to speak. Most plants were simply there, with no voice or intellect. But as a disgruntled face slowly took shape in the white stalk and two grubby little hands reached up and firmly readjusted the now-tattered cap on top, Skippy changed his mind. Intellect or no, the mushroom was speaking to him.
Not just speaking to him, but mocking him. Now the base of the stalk took on the appearance of stubby little legs that waded through the dark soil, pacing back and forth, waving his arms, giving the cap an aggressive tilt.
“Who? Who, the feather-brain says. Boy, I tell ye, no respect these aviaries. If me mate Ringo were ‘ere, he’d fettle ye for sure.”
“You know Ringo?” The owl burst out in surprise. The mushroom cocked his head, the cap flopping dangerously to one side.
“Eh? Wot’s that yer sayin’? Aye, I knaw Ringo. Right good lad, that. Not like some people, walkin’ around, puttin’ their filthy mouths all over me good headgear!”
“Oh…” Skippy suddenly became aware he was still tonguing the bit of mushroom cap in his beak. “Terribly sorry, sir.” Gingerly, he leaned forward and offered the vegetation its bit of cap back. For a moment, the mushroom simply glared out of one pale brown eye, sizing up the little owl. Then it shook its fist, snatched itself out of Skippy’s mouth, and planted the jagged triangular piece with excessive firmness back where it belonged.
“Eh, well, all of us ‘ave to learn sometime. But let it be a lesson, young hoot. Don’t fool wi’ mushrooms! We’ll make you think you’re bein’ eaten alive by rainbows, we will!”
And in a blinding rush it came to Skippy-this was why Ringo had warned him not to disturb the mushrooms. Not because they were poisonous, but because they were cranky. This was also probably where Ringo had gotten his strange accent.
Funny how many conclusions one could be led to by conversing with a surly fungus.
**To Be Continued**
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