2 weeks ago, the plastic owl was at her stand. It was mid-afternoon. She was still there yesterday at dusk, poor plastic thing.

When I was a boy, owls used to hunt around me as I pruned fruit trees in light like this, and darker. The sky was full of stars. Those were little pigmy owls, 15 centimetres high at most. They’d stash grassland shrews in the crotches of the trees and come back for them months later. I’d still be there, learning my craft. Since them I’ve heard and watched many owls, mostly great big, screaming owls making the night come alive as they called for each other in the dark, usually just above me, and usually under a spreading sky of stars. It hurts to live in the land of plastic owls, you know?