The Captive Wild

(May 2024 PSOPH)

(Joshua J. Cotten)

Hi, I’m Rianna Cohen, a speculative fiction writer and hot chocolate aficionado currently listening to a lot of Beethoven. If you feel so inclined, please:

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As many of you don’t know, I’ve been an avid owl-lover since second grade (this predates Harry Potter, thank you very much) when my tonsils were removed and my parents presented me with a snowy owl toy upon waking. We’re still friends:

There’s a nifty little puppet action inside which allows the head to turn around.

I grew up in bird-loving family, but the focus was primarily on the small ones frequenting backyard feeders or darting across the road at inopportune moments. I love those little buddies too, but it’s the beasts that always called to me: The Raptors. The Birds of Prey. The ones that frighten us a little bit.

And, while hawks and eagles are interesting enough, the owl is King of Raptors because it belongs to the night. There’s something enigmatic and untouchable about them, like they’re the last remnant of a fairy tale in a world that insists on concrete and logic and clear-cut.

Despite our desires to control everything by pinning it down, dissecting and labeling it, the owl remains stubbornly shadowed.

Owl Amulet (Egypt; ca. 1390–1352 B.C.)

When the barred owl hoots we transcribe it as who cooks for you? and that in itself feels like a doorway, a riddle for which we have no answer.

Owls remind me of our own smallness. Of our own unknowing. That, no matter how we catalogue the brain or the universe or the deep ocean, we will never know all.

That that is okay.

Several of said barreds frequent my neighborhood. Usually they present themselves at ten-fifteen at night with raucous squawks and calls or at five in the morning with a gentle, singular hoot or two.

There’s one in particular who makes a distinctive ascending screech before launching into the famous call. The screech will wake you from a dead sleep, launch your heart to cardio levels, and make you clutch the blankets a little tighter. And then, ah, you realize it’s just an owl. But—for that brief moment—something primitive awakes inside and the world isn’t so tame, so neatly controlled.

Then we wake in full to traverse manicured lawns on smoothly paved roads. Nature grows in its assigned place until we have need of a new townhouse subdivision.

Because it wouldn’t do to be too wild. It would be ignorant to believe in something greater, something other, something beyond. We’re living in our own fairy tale, one that warns of stepping off the path. And as long as the wildness is held captive, we’re in control, safe, powerful.

Right?

After decades (How to Age Yourself 101: use ‘decades’ instead of ‘years’), I finally saw my first non-captivity owl—during the daytime no less.

Until next time,

Rianna

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May…

• Music: Dan Knight

• Rainy days, baked potato soup, and goodbyes

Up Next:

• Experiments