Non-Nocturnals

I can’t sleep. My eyes keep popping open every few seconds and the crickets won't stop crackling. The light of the moon is slowly breaking my slumber.

That’s when you get as a daytime owl I suppose.

I’ve just never preferred night time. It’s so foreboding and filled with lurking creatures that I just choose not to partake. The weather is just far too blustery for travel anyway. And Nighttime is an absolute BORE. But daytime... daytime is when things are alive. Well, at least the things I’m OKAY with being alive. Those rats and insects can scurry all they want when I’m off the clock, but I prefer to hear about them via secondhand owling tales.

Ugh and that moon. That moon is just doggone STARING at me. Ah yes, I haven’t brought up the moon quite yet, have I? Well, get this, I am almost positively certain that the moon - yes the MOON - is constantly winking at me. It’s terrifying, I think there’s a little creature up there, a “man” as I’ve heard some of the young ones say.

One downside about daytime, the very few there are, is the well, the lonelier part of my day treks. The birds in my hollow don’t love my daytime preferences, encouraging me to just experience the beautiful solitude of the hours after sunset. Also, I’m a vegetarian, and I much rather take to berries and weeds than any squeak a mouse may make. They probably hate that more, but they just kinda let me have it.

Because I’ve been doing more exploring than flying, my wings don't flutter quite as much as I remember them to, and they softly fall in molt along the tree branches where I am. My nest-placed carefully nearby, I am nowhere but so very high. My eyes twitch and adjust, previous pitch-black becoming grayer in scale. The night has been cleared with my glasses.

These loose thoughts are snapped by another snapping of branches breaking below and behind and my neck seems to follow twisting in a swift rush.

My eyes interpret the sounds. 2 forms with two scraggly wings and also 2 un-webbed claws run around in circles. I cock my head, staring them down. They are babbling something like “shush shush!” and I begin to worry for their safety. Not wasting a moment more, I coo “hoo-hoo” in the direction of them.

The giggling cuts off and the forms turn their entire body toward the tree and crane up their own necks. Why don't they just turn their necks around? Seems an incredibly inefficient use of energy.

The center form face appears to be lit up, as they begin babbling with the same intensity from before.

“Dude It’s an OWL!!!” the first one screeches, pointing up to my home, annoyingly close to my nest. “Those suckers are noctranal”. He looks over to the other, smug and pleased, nose upturned.

The form to the left looks unblinking toward the center, and for a moment I resonate with her perceived distaste. “Ugh, it’s nocturnal Calvin. Keep it down. Mr. Grudman will hear. We shouldn’t be out so late”

Her whispers perk up my ears as I feel my eyes get wider. Dread. Oh no. Oh dear oh dear. How did I mistake the moonlight for the sun? Morning is nowhere close, and I’m wide awake. How could this have even happened? I was not anticipating this level of chaos to start my day.

Winston. This was definitely his doing. The afternoon feels a little less fuzzy now, its coming back. The berries he gave me, they konked me out real good. It was halfway in the day! But why was he awake?

Oh yea, we were in the city!

We had happened upon this beautiful little garden, full of flowers and small little creatures. Not the rodents that Winston likes to gobble up whole. Guck. I just have to accept I’m different than the others, more sophisticated even. I bet my whole left-wing he’s just lurking somewhere. Just perched upon an oak, expecting to see my enlightened new eyes unleashed into the “beauty” of the night.

How about more like some pebbles to his beak.

Reeling still, I look back down at the young ones, now bickering about some nonsense.

“Nah they’re all got night vision AND echolocation. They’re in like the same family as a bat.” The first one squeaks out unleashing the second one’s tiny rage

“CALVIN, nocturnal animals only have ecosystems in common. None of their functions are the same!”

Upon her scream, a distant hoot perks up from a couple of yards off, and there is Winston, as I thought, but not perched on an oak but rather a tall placard of stone. His beak I swear is curved into an upturned smile. The young ones' bickering ceases, thankfully, and their attention is now captured by the other winged beast. Winston and I engage in a staredown.

Try me, bird. I haven’t lost you yet in a match.

A moment passes, and Winston and pulls away from his gaze, staring up at the moon, and back at me.

Does he want me to lookup? Oh, certainly NOT. He knows about my vendetta against Mr. Moon. He knows of his plots that he refuses to reveal, the smirks and the glints and the winks. And yet he insists on me following his eyes. A glance, a nod. “Trust me,” he speaks with his golden amber rings.

An eye roll is not quite sufficient for that lovely statement. To fully express my...opinion I decided to turn a 360 degree ‘round on my neck. He’ll get the picture that way.

He kinda chuckles at my defiance and gestures up with his wing.

“Oh, I know. I know. Just, look.”

A deep shaking sigh of despair, a blink or two, and fine. I look.

And suddenly, it's calm. Fog floats by softly, blanketing the silence with its atmosphere.

Somehow, my senses heightened. Each smell potent but hard to place. Sounds increasing with magnifying source. Generators buzzing in the quiet of the night, heat smoggy and smelling like weed and fire, the fog felt closer as it scraped past the moon, covering its blinding flashlight for a moment before a respite, then its friends returning to play the scene.

My own lookout for the stars and the covered moon. The dusty clouds formed tendrils of mist enrapturing the far away rock. The entire world vibrates with the night and I welcomed its movement.

I look back at Winston, and he repeating nods return. He sees me, he’s shown me. Forced the moment upon me without the beating down beaming of the sunlight, the

It’s just him and I. Standing in the park, looking at the sky from a different side. The young ones have run off, Mr. Gudman's voice echoing in the background. But that's not quite so loud anymore.

Perhaps he is right, and my daytimes can take a break now and then.

Oh of course I will still have days in the sun, I wouldn’t t rade that for all the peace and quiet of any large oak tree. But I think I can learn to forgo it every now and again. To hear the buzz of our worlds silences, feel the thrum of the quiet life, and gaze into the brightness of our darkness.

Yes, the moon is winking at me again.

I think I’ll wink back.