Hoot Owl Outside my Window

I arrived home last night at 10:30--nothing unusual. What was unusual is that Brian was already asleep on the couch. I woke him and sent him to bed. What sucks about being a night student but an early bird is that I am not sleepy when I come home. I am tired, but not ready to sink into sleep. You see, my day has been going since 5 am or earlier and didn't stop until I got home at 10:30. I need to do something relaxing. To most people, DH included, that's watch TV. I can waste hours on mindless TV but it's not what I consider relaxing. It's noise to me. So, my relaxation, as some of you might guess, is to go hang outside with the super excited furball who is now ready to play. Well, I don't call playing at nearly midnight relaxing, but the outdoors part is.

So, tonight, being like any other night, I walked outside on the lanai. The first thing I noticed was a hoot owl hooting. Now, if I were still in FtB, this would not surprise me, or still on my hill in Knoxville. But living in suburbia, this is strange. I looked (stupidly) around for the bird. Ok, dummy, it's nighttime, there are two trees around you and you can't see in them. Why are you looking for an owl?

Oddly enough, Chance looked up and put his sniffer in the air; so I looked up, and there was my owl, perched on the light pole, right above the light, making him very hard to see and well hidden, but giving him a keen view of everything around. I was ecstatic. One, this is surprising in suburbia. Two, I expected him to leave with mine and Chance's presence. But he stayed. The trees were quiet as ever, every vermin that occupied them surely was not moving. I sat on the end of the porch smiling every time I heard the familiar "hooooo, hoo, hoo, hhoooo-ooo-ooo, hoo". Such sweet sound to a girl from the country. And that means perhaps, the friendly owl will return and take away that pestering possum that's stealing my veggies from the garden.

Finally, I decided I was going to bed. As I stood up and turned my back to the owl, I walked across the porch and heard nothing more than a squeal, a tiny one. I turned and looked and my owl was gone. And so the life cycle goes, Chance and I crawled in the bed and drifted off to dreamland, while our feathery night watcher enjoyed a snack...hope it was the possum.