night noise

the other night, a sound came from above. it was an immediate thump, and then a sequence of smaller bumps, accelerating from one part of the ceiling towards the window. after a gap, a bass thud rang a finality.

on the flat roof under the bedroom window, i plucked a small, heavy clod; it could be dirt, it could be a chunk of the chimney, it could be a rotten seed pod.

'owl pellet, maybe?'

in second grade, my teacher didn't know how to handle my boredom, so she passed me off to an upper level science teacher on breaks to entertain me. i was given owl pellets, tweezers, and elmer's glue; i pulled the dried hairs apart and extracted tiny bones, reconstructing mice in the hour before lunch. i'd start with jawbones; often, there would be three or four lower jaws, but not enough skulls to fill the blanks, and too few femurs or rib cages.

'maybe the owl doesn't eat the whole mice,' i'd report to the teacher. i haven't disassembled an owl pellet since.

25 April 2018 22:40