At Last, the Owl As You've Never Seen it Before

I've been thinking about owls lately. To be more honest I have been thinking about owls since about midday today when a friend mentioned that he saw one once. I must admit that this rather surprised me. One doesn't normally think of owls as something one sees. One merely assumes they are there because we aren't waist deep in rabbits and field mice. It has to be admitted that we take owls rather for granted.

Well, no more! Let this blog entry be the first shot in a positive artillery barrage of owl affirmation. If pressed I will freely admit that I am not, perhaps, the best person to lead the serried ranks of owldom across the no mans land of ignorance into the machine gun fire of public awareness but it would appear that the mantle has fallen to me. The reason for my unsuitability for the role is my complete lack of knowledge about owls. So I'll just make some shit up.

Owls were invented in 1735 by Nils Holfsjerk a little known Danish painter who was tired of his canvasses being eaten by rabbits and field mice. Holfsjerk's initial delight at his creation soon turned to despair when he was sued by his neighbour, Lars Olfstrum the owner of Oflstrum's Rabbit and Field Mouse Emporium. Holfsjerk was driven from his native Copenhagen and died a lonely and embittered exile in Buenos Aires in 1740.

Despite this unpromising beginning owls struggled on for the next century or so supporting themselves mainly in waiting jobs and the occasion supporting part in arthouse theatre productions. Their big break came in 1854 when Denmark got into a war with Prussia and the Austrian Empire. Rumours swept Denmark that specially trained rabbits and field mice were being used to carry messages to the advancing Prussian and Austrian troops. An elite interdiction squad of highly trained owls was swiftly raised and by the end of the war the invaders were reduced to relying on the telegraph.

Unfortunately for the Danes this corps of owls was possibly the most efficient part of their army and Denmark was swiftly defeated. In the aftermath of war many owls emigrated seeking greener pastures (well stocked with rabbits and field mice of course) above which to swoop. Now of course owls can be found everywhere except Costa Rica for some reason which has never been fully explained.

In Australia owls have a long, if shadowy, history. Migrating at the end of the Second World War owls were encouraged to settle to assist farmers in combating a rabbit (and possibly field mouse) plague. There are dark rumours than in their desperation to get owl assistance the government overlooked the fact that some of these owls were wanted for war crimes and indeed provided said owls with new identities on arrival. Of course that was all a long time ago and today's Australian owls are upstanding model citizens that we can all be proud of, unless we are a rabbit or a field mouse of course.

I hope the preceding entry has done a little to redress the conspiracy of silence which seems to surround our feathery hunters of the night. I encourage parents to read this blog to their children to encourage them to become ornithologists or at least to get a realistic view of the reliability of internet sourced reference material. Tune in next week when I reveal the astonishing truth about tapeworms.