You Were Worth It

Owls should not be shot, not even with paintballs, the girl knew. She had recently been struck by a paintball during an ill-advised church summer camp activity. The hit had left a welt. A paintball to a bird's delicate bone structure would probably cripple or kill it.

So when the boys raised their paintball guns toward the owl trapped in the barn rafters, anger prompted her to scream, "Stop!" They didn't. Her teenage brother and his three friends didn't care about the opinion of a tagalong little sister.

She used the best threat she knew. "I'll tell Dad!" she yelled at her brother.

Her brother lowered his gun. His friends followed suit and looked at him questioningly. "Dad won't care!" he blustered.

"Yes he will!" she retorted.

His friends snickered. "You really care what your dad thinks?" sneered the biggest one in the Fight Club t-shirt.

"You should care, too!" the small girl faced off against the large boy. "If you shoot a barn owl and my dad finds out, he won't let you guys come back."

This gave them pause. The huge old barn was the best paintball course they had access to. All summer, the boys had worked hard, erecting plywood hideouts and adding more ladders and ropes for better access to the loft's upper-level "sniper" stations.

Thanks to this free playing field, her brother's popularity had soared. He had friends over all the time now. The girl hated it. Long before her brother had seen its possibility, the barn had been her playground.

When her brother had begged for permission to transform the weather-gray barn into a paintball paradise, their father had shrugged. "I don't see why not," he agreed. "No one else is really using it."

But that wasn't true. The girl knew where a small hole near the arched roof's peak allowed the Michigan barn swallows entry when the doors were closed. That same hole was the exit point for the small bats who also roosted in the rafters.

And the old building was home to the barn cats. Once, the girl had witnessed a mama cat dangle upside down, talons buried in an inlaid roof beam as she clawed her way to a barn swallow nest. Though the nest raiding bothered her, she sadly told herself young birds being fed to young kittens was the circle of life.

She knew the locations of several mouse nests, which sometimes fell prey to swift cat claws, too.

No one was using the barn? Ridiculous. The girl had spent hours alone in the structure watching her own private nature channel. The barn was practically an ecosystem unto itself, and she was its naturalist.

Now her beloved barn had attracted an owl, the most interesting creature to ever enter her habitat. But her brother and his stupid friends were going to ruin it. The beautiful bird would never visit again if the boys scared or hurt it.

The stalemate didn't last long. In response to his friends' grumbles, her brother said, "If you tell Dad we used an owl for target practice, I'll tell him you like girls."

The girl gasped with the pain of betrayal. One boy hooted with laughter. The other mocked, "Ooooh" on an ascending note, while the big one said, "Eww," with a disgusted face.

Her brother had the grace to look ashamed after the words left his mouth. And well he should. He had promised. He had promised, and now the whole church youth group would know. The youth pastor would hear about it. He would tell her parents, and she would be forced to go to "counseling" with the pastor. She would never be treated the same again.

"It's not true," she desperately denied. But they knew they had her. The muscly one raised his gun, casually firing at the owl. An orange splatter appeared on a beam beside him. The owl defensively lowered his head, spread his wings slightly, and hissed.

It wasn't right. None of it was right. "Go ahead and tell Dad!" the girl screamed. Her secret wouldn't stay secret now anyway. "Shoot at that owl one more time, and I'll tell him what you did!" Then she ran for the ladder to the higher loft. She felt tears fall on the backs of her hands as she grasped the rungs.

But there were no more shots. "Whatever," said the nicer one. "We came here to shoot at each other. Who's on my team?" The boys dispersed to the lower levels. She would have the upper barn to herself for a little while.

Vision blurry, she swiped at tears as she crossed the loft to the second ladder, the one built into the far wall. When she reached the top, nervousness struck her. This was the highest she'd ever been.

She'd once heard her dad tell a friend he could easily store his boat through the winter, since the barn was 45 feet (14 meters) tall. Their dad had told his kids never to go onto the last ladder. It straddled the space from the wall to the roof's apex at a terrifying diagonal. She'd never had any desire to climb it.

Then the staccato pops of firing paintballs started up below, and the owl became agitated, swooping through the rafters and shrieking in warning. His screams were bloodcurdling, reminding the girl why most people just called barn owls "screech owls."

The owl's fear spurred her on. Telling herself that Susannah the cat did it, she gripped the rungs of the highest ladder and let her back face the floor as she climbed higher. She was an excellent tree climber: her aunt called her "a little spider monkey." She could do this.

Then a rung snapped, and suddenly she was dangling by one hand over empty space. She waited for the next rung to break, for her life to flash before her eyes, for a swift plummet and a smash landing. But no life scenes played on fast forward, so the girl reasoned she wasn't about to die.

Praying the rung would continue to hold, she grasped it with both hands and swung her feet back onto the ladder. With shaking limbs, she resumed her climb to the closed window panel cut into the barn wall.

Her arms were not long enough to reach the old hook-and-eye latch, so she wrapped one arm around the side and a rung of the ladder, leaning until her fingers freed the rusty clasp and the wooden window swung outward on creaking hinges.

Light spilled in, and blue sky beckoned like a beacon. The owl barely waited for her to move down a few rungs before swooping over her head to freedom. His wide wings were silent, but she felt the wind of his passing.

She watched him dwindle smaller in the distance until he flew into the woods across the road. Breathing in the seasoned scent of warm old wood to calm herself, she slowly scooted down the ladder, skipping the rung that hung in two pieces.

Safe on the loft floor, she bent to retrieve a long, barred white feather at her feet. She inspected it at eye level and smiled. "You were worth it," she said.

The next day, her father looked over the dinner table at his two oldest children. "Can either of you tell me why the window at the top of the barn is wide open?"

The girl stared at her plate. She'd had no way to relatch the window and had been dreading her father's wrath. The climb hadn't killed her, but her dad might once he knew what she'd been doing.

Her brother spoke up. "It was me, sir," he said apologetically. "I opened it so we'd have more light to play paintball."

Her father shook his head. "Boys," he said mildly, as if it were no more than he expected from male youths at play. He sighed. "You're going to hold the tall ladder steady while I climb up there to close it, understood?" Then more sternly, "And don't go up that far again. It's dangerous."

"Yessir," her brother said.

Once their dad's attention was elsewhere, she and her brother side-eyed each other. Guilt shadowed his face, and she felt the sharp edge of her anger dull somewhat. When he gave her a sad smile, she nodded back. Maybe one day she would speak to him again after all.