owl release

There were three young owlets in the crate. Two females with toasted marshmallow bellies and a glowing white male. Their calls sounded like air slowly being released from a tire with undertones of a ringwraith, unearthly screams in a pint sized package. We reached their release point, Hazel Bazemore Park - an important migration route for the thousands of raptors skirting the edge of the gulf coast. We unloaded their crate, propping it up on a wooden bannister that overlooked a thick swath of forest. It was dusk, the golden hour, and the sky was filled with the hues of butternut squash, viridian, and candlelight. It was a perfect night for three owlets to return home.

The crate door was opened and the owlets hushed, clustered together at the back and unsure as to what trickery their human captors were playing on them. Was it safe? Was the greenery beyond the open crate door limitless? The first to leave was the largest female; a feisty carmel colored lady who was darker than her sister. She took us all by surprise, shooting out of the crate with silent fury. We fumbled for our cameras and I was lucky enough to get a snapshot of her rocketing into the undergrowth. The next female we were ready for. Her talons scrabbled against the plastic of the crate and she too flew with a quiet intensity into the trees. Last but not least, the male left the sanctity of the crate. He was the most distinct, his coloration standing out immediately against the sky, now muted to pastel colors. I followed his brilliant white and tawny flight into the trees with my camera until he sunk below the foliage.

To release a wild animal back into its native habitat after proper rehabilitation is invigorating. There are three new owlets in the woods of Hazel Bazemore, using their natural adaptations and apex predator instincts to hunt mice to their hearts' content. No more thawed white mice, no more confined spaces. They will be the epitome of free.

short story

I wrote a short story yesterday for my fiction writing class. The prompt was to choose a photograph and write a 2-3 page story about it. This is what I chose.




Sentinel

Every time he looked at it, shivers cascaded down Christian’s spine. There was nothing but tradition that kept it rooted to the outskirts of town. It was the 21st century, for God’s sake. Don’t let anyone catch you saying the Lord’s name in vain in this town though. It may be the 21st century, but you wouldn’t know it by the way people acted. His own mother still claimed that wearing pants was only for boys and that the girl he was seeing, Sarah Lemmick, was a no-good hussy because she had a tattoo. When he asked his mother what the giant, skeletal mass was doing nearby their town at all, she simply told him that God placed it there to watch over them. To keep the people who lived there honest and pure for all time.
“So she thinks it’s a warning then?” Sarah asked, giggling at the thought as Christian handed her another Milwaukee’s Best. Her face was illuminated by firelight, the tiny star tattoo at the corner of her eye emphasized by the contrasting shadow of her nose.
“I guess”, he said, shrugging as he took a sip of warm beer. He would never admit to her just how much the creature terrified him. The size of it, tall as Town Hall, was unnerving enough, but its presence was ultimately the real factor that triggered the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end. Its basic morphology was like that of a beast, but like no beast he’d ever seen. Crooked horns jetted from the cranium of the creature, the skull elongated like an elk’s, but with carnivorous teeth ten times the size of any bear’s. The structures of bat-like wings were fused to the shoulder blades. The most off-putting thing about it was none of these admittedly strange features, however. For Christian, it was the fact that the main infrastructure of the skeleton, the rib cage and the hipbones, it all seemed eerily human. The arms extended to just above the knee, similar to a human’s skeleton, but the claws were like something out of Nightmare on Elm Street. It was standing upright like a human. In Christian’s dreams, it walked just like a human, but with longer and heavier strides that carried it more and more quickly towards his house as he slept.
“I think she believes that it’s the skeleton of a demon that God put here as a reminder”, he continued, elaborating, “A reminder that there is evil in this world and we shouldn’t succumb to it.” It was not his favorite topic to discuss so late at night (or early in the morning, depending on how you looked at it), but Sarah loved this kind of shit. Her favorite movies were nothing but horror and gore, with the occasional sex scene.
“Has anyone bothered testing to see if it’s an actual skeleton?” Sarah scoffed, finishing off her beer and holding her hand out for another one, “You could probably tell if it was plaster or not just by touching it.”
The thought of touching it made Christian shudder involuntarily. When Sarah looked at him quizzically, he drew his jacket around him.
“It’s a little chilly. Maybe we should go home”, he said, trying to sound as indifferent as possible.
“No way. I want to see if that thing is real”, Sarah said, grinning as she snatched the beer he was holding out to her and swaying unsteadily to her feet.


---


Christian couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder in a paranoid fashion as they stood at the foot of the thing, Sarah arching back with her hands on her hips so that she could see the whole thing.
“Shit Christian, can you believe I’ve never come to see this since I moved here? I mean, I’ve lived here for six months. Six months is enough time to explore any town, especially this one…”
“Real or not do you think?” Christian asked, a little impatiently as the sky grew steadily greyer. The sun was coming up, and he wanted to get back home before his mother discovered he’d snuck out with Sarah again. Among other things.
“Hmm…maybe we should leave it a secret”, Sarah said, looking over at Christian with a stunning, but mischievous smile, “Otherwise it’ll take all the fun out of it.”
“It’s just a bunch of religious nut jobs who built it to keep kids from having pre-marital sex”, Christian grumbled, “’S not real.” He had to be confident. He had to believe it.
“Or maaaybe it is real. Maybe it even has consciousness. Maybe it really is watching us when we go out and drink at night”, Sarah said slyly, her last few words already melting into a bubbly, intoxicated laugh.
“You’re drunk”, Christian said firmly, smiling slightly and catching her arm as she stumbled a little, “Let’s go home.”
“Wait!” she cried, slipping a Panasonic point-and-shoot out of her hoodie pocket, “I want to take a picture of it.”
They backed up to the edge of its field and Christian allowed Sarah one shot before he dragged her back into the woods, towards home.

End

OR IS IT? I think I'm going to try to do this more often, I like it. I have tons of storeez to tell from the weekend as well, so I'll get around to posting that once I recover a little from the most recent bout of heartsickness.