The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar by Martin Windrow Page B

of the cartoon cat Sylvester trying to sneak up on the canary Tweetypie – was particularly amusing when I saw her dashing from behind one bit of cover to another, stopping, then making the next short rush. Naturally, she liked tunnelling into dark corners under low bits of furniture, but also stomping around boisterously underneath things that had a taller clearance. Predictably, the newspapers on various parts ofthe floor would often suffer catastrophically under her joyous attacks.
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    I did try giving her a ping-pong ball to play with, but after kicking it around listlessly a couple of times she completely lost interest. Since she couldn’t get a claw into its hard surface, she didn’t seem to think it was worth chasing – crumpled-up balls of newspaper were much more fun. She was also delighted with a gift from one of my friends: a light, soft plush ball of the kind that mums hang from the top of prams and cots. She killed this within seconds, bore it up to her door top (with some balance difficulties during the flight – it was nearly the size of a tennis ball) and proceeded to disembowel it, expertly. Within fifteen minutes the floor was littered far and wide with its stuffing of synthetic fluff. I didn’t want her to swallow any of this dubious stuff, which was no doubt made from some petrochemical by-product, and it was clear that if I got her any more of these toys they wouldn’t last more than minutes, so I didn’t repeat that particular treat.
    For some unfathomable reason, she seemed to be fascinated by my feet. If she was down on the floor she stalked them silently when I walked past, making me nervous that I might step on her. When she was up on her door top she often watched them moving past below her with intent focus, calculating their range, course and speed before curling her talons over the edge of her perch, dropping her head between them to keep her eyes centredon the target, and then launching herself unerringly.
    I soon began to wonder if the real objective of these attacks was my shoelaces, which seemed to be a constant temptation. Sometimes she would stroll innocently across the living-room floor to sit on the carpet beside my chair, her quiet little head apparently watching the TV screen, but before long I would feel the tap of her landing on one of my crossed feet. Settling herself firmly, she bowed her head and began nibbling and tugging at my laces. Her sharp, hooked bill was shockingly destructive, and when I could no longer be bothered to keep shooing her off she was capable in minutes of reducing a piece of woven lace to a drift of separated, broken threads on the carpet below my feet. I soon had to replace all my laces with leather thongs; the discarded worm-corpses of the woven ones, discovered in wastepaper baskets, were among her favourite playthings.
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Diary:
11 August 1978
(
c
. 3.5 months old)
    Tonight was a first – it seems trivial, but it’s yet another pleasing contrast to my experience with Wellington. Normally, when I go into the balcony cage to fetch her indoors after coming home in the evening, I wait for her to go through her routine of ‘whooping’ in the corner of her hutch before emerging, and then sitting on her doorstep perch for a couple of minutes while she gets herself organized. Meanwhile, I stand with the cardboard boxunder my left arm, open end towards her. When she seems to be settled, I reach out and slide my right hand up behind her legs so that she steps backwards on to it; then I guide hand and owl together into the box, simultaneously swivelling it round against my chest to leave only a narrow crack from which to extract my hand. I then try to get back indoors before her frustration provokes painful efforts to dig her way out through my chest. This may be accompanied by chittering, and a furious, whiskery little face trying to squeeze its way into view around the edge of the box.
    Tonight, as I stood waiting for her to finish blinking,