Bletherings

Bingo(ish)

We had a bit of a chat me and Barn Owl and I stood loud and proud in the middle of the moorland as I asked if it could be so kind as to give me an audience. Actually I said ‘she’. It felt more polite. 

I’ve always been uncomfortable using the ‘it’ word. ‘It’ makes me think of a none living thing. A construct, something that doesn’t matter. Perhaps to be totally correct I should say ‘they’ but that too doesn’t really fit with this old Lancashire guy. Maybe I need to get over myself and use ‘they’ as it’s perhaps the nearest we’ve got to a non gender reference that beats the britches off ‘it’.

Nicola bought me the book Braiding Sweetgrass a couple of birthdays ago in which Robin explains very eloquently how her ancestors, First Nation Americans, had a word for a living being that didn’t refer to gender. In fact everything that wasn’t man-made was referred to with this word be it a bay, a forest or a boulder. Sentience was ascribed and I’m good with that.

Anyhow I digress... owl played ball today.

In fact she came within a couple of hundred metres of me, dived on a rat, gobbled it up and then did a little burp before settling on a nearby wall to digest a while. Watch it in the clip below. She made me smile.

But now I’m not happy. I want to be closer still. So, I’m going to work this relationship, find our boundaries and see what gifts she’ll offer me. And by the way, she’s introduced me to her guy too! Which means that when I’m watching her in the middle distance I’ll be wondering if he’s doing the penguin dance fifty feet behind me!