AGELESS RITUAL OF THE NIGHT QUEEN

Introduction

The Night Queen-The Barn Owl is a reminiscence in calm tones the memory of a barn that has remained solitary in a wheat field for a century at any rate. The owls have settled there and have pursued in the fields and circumnavigated in the night skies as time gradually sneaked past. Consistently, as the moon rises, a barn owl stirs and flies out to chase.

Padded against the unending brilliant evening, he plunges and sails to the obscured wheat field underneath and gets a mouse in his deft claws. With outstretched wings, this stable owl gets back to his outbuilding home and his ravenous family, rehashing the ever-enduring ceremonial his predecessors have drilled here, in this stable, for no less than a century.

Following the existing pattern of the barn owl, this delicate sonnet brings out a feeling of warm daylight and envelopes perusers with the memory of the fragrance of a wheat field.

Growing Up

As a young lad, I followed my dad and grandfather to the farm. We live in the countryside in a serene environment devoid of the modern-day noise pollution and the hustle and bustle of city life. We stay close to nature! Clean streams of water, fresh air from the green trees around etc...

Though we don't have all the contemporary facilities and gadgets around us, yet we live a peaceaful contended life. We don't have electricity power supply, but make use of a local lantern that uses wax and wick to lighten up the night while at home.

We don't buy food materials, but eat out of our produce from the nearby farms. We planted nice crops such as watermelon, pumpkins, apple trees, potatoes, vegetables, wheat, maize etc.

My mother is a very dutiful industrious woman. She prepares and cook the meal and takes cares of the home front, while we work on the farm. She is the supritendent at home!

My two older siblings have gone to the nearby city to live with an uncle to further their academics, while I stayed back. They said in a year time I will join the city league to start schooling too.

The village where we live is a quite community where basic some amenities found in the cities are available. There are three schools, post office, market place, but my father said he wants a better life for my siblings, and that accounts for why they were sent to the city.

Helping out on the farm is tedious for my little body frame. I will try hard to please my dad by joining him in whatever he does...just copying...

it doesn't really amount to anything much in the real sense of it, but very great in my sight!

Going to the farm in the morning and coming back in the evening is a normal norm and has become a ritual.

I was never tired of going to the farm because of the excitement of seeing the birds singing sonorous songs endlessly on tree branches, rabbits running around, squirells darting up and down looking for food, and our dog named Lucky trying to catch them is quite fun for me.

My Expeirince Wth The Night Queen

Usually, I go to bed very early daily after the days work. On this particular night I decided not to follow my normal procotol but hang out a little more with my father and grandfather outside the farm house.

On this fateful day, that should be around 12 midnight or so, am not so sure but every living being had slept...and the quiteness of the night testified to my conclusion.

I guess or probably thought we all had slept off outside after taking the dinner. Suddenly, I woke up as if something jerked me up from a deep slumber. I gradually opened my eyes and stared at the starry dark night, with the moon providing the only sourec of a weak illumination.

I was scared as sat up and was wondering while are were outside in the first place at this time of the day. My thought was interrupted rudely by a scary big-eyed huge creature gliding slowly towards me without any noise. I was scared stiff where I sat. Many thoughts were running riot in my little chest.

Is it a ghost? Is it coming to attack me? Is it coming to attack us? Is it one those bad spirits of the night my grandfather had told me stories with bad omen? Thousands of thought in a second ran through my mind as I watched it approch magestically!

All of a sudden, it flew past overhead and headed straight to the area where chopped woods were kept. It swooped swiftly, silently and precisely on an object which I later found out to be a rodent-mice and caught it with its talons which took it away the same way as it came.

Immediately I shouted "father! father!! father!!!".

My father and grand father both jostled to life immediately. They asked in fear...what happened? So many questions were asked within a second, without waiting for a response from me before another one was being asked. They initailly thought, I was bitten by a snake or recoverying from a a very bad night mare.

After calming me down they now ask quitely..."what happened in a chorus!"

I took time to recollect and narrated my ordeal. To my amazement, my grandfather bursted into an hillarious laughter!

In my confused state, I asked why are you laughing grandpa?

He said calmly, "that was The Night Queen-The Barn Owl"

He rearranged himself, he took a better position as he leaned on a tree stump. He said, that bird is called the Barn Owl and they had lived in this farm for more than hundred years performing the same ritual day-in-day -out. He said his great grand father also told him the same story he is telling me when he was young.

My father ask rheotorically...but I have heard anything like this before? My grand father now told my father" you never had same experience as your son before. The moment you sleep, it's only cock crows at dawn that wakens you up in the morning. You never venture into the night after you slept". Never, not even once!

My father never liked that joke, he grinned at my grandfather with a bad contenance; while I and my grandgfather laughed loudly as we enjoyed the joke!

Continuing, he said, the Night Queen-The Barn Owl had been a generation of swift and precise hunters down the years. He said the ability to see very clearly more than any other nocturnal animal or birds in the middle of the night gave them an immense advantage.

Eagles rule the day, while Owls rule the night!

They both have great sights. They could see clearly, locate and calculate with precision their prey's position and distance while swooping on them unawares.

He eulogies their hunting prowress and attributed it to their survival instinct and adaptive characteristics that ensures contitunity of their offspring over the years.

He said they live and build their nests, raised young ones in the wheat field. He also told me that, I will not see any of them in the afternoon because they are only active in the night. In relation to their magestic qualities, the whole community refers to them as The Night Queen.

The Final Note

After this narration and ordeal, I was so elated and excited at the same time...

Since that day onward, I use to sneak out of bed in the night to watch these wonderful creatures perform their skillful stealth manoeuvres on their unsuspecting preys.

The irony is that, I no longer fear but excited each time I see one in action!

I hope to tell same story to my children when I grow old someday...

I ruminate as I slept off while planning to sneak out again as usual in the night!