Baby Barred Owls are Terrifying

No Really.  They are.

If you look them up on Google, they look like this:

Oh My, you say, he's soooo cute!

You look at this little guy and you want to cuddle him. He's adorable.

I mean, look at him! He's basically a cartoon owl.

He could sing or sew a dress with a Disney princess.

So, it's hard to believe that this little guy can unleash a sound that mimics a pig being slaughtered, but they absolutely do.

The sound pierces the night like a dagger, and if you happen to be slumbering peacefully near an open window in Michigan in the spring like I was one night, it will wake you with the kind of jolt that sends your soul out of your body and whitens your hair.


Really.


You can hear it here, use your back button to return to this page:
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/sounds/Owl_Barred_Baby.mp3


There I was suddenly lying wide awake, saucer-eyed, as my half asleep human brain struggled to comprehend the source of that horrific sound.  I didn't want to move or look out the window lest I discover a monster of cinematic proportion staring back at me through the flimsy screen of the opening that had previously been a source of a calm evening breeze. You're not sure you heard it, but then you hear it again, and again.

I quietly prayed it would stop and pulled my covers up to my eyes. When it finally ceased, I drifted into a troubled rest and was grateful when the dawn came.

I grew up in the forest where my parents still live and  I'm not afraid of it. I know the ground so well, that I can walk around the property in the dark.  However, after being awakened by that sound and hearing it repeatedly for twenty minutes, it took me weeks to go outside alone after dark.

My soul was certain the screaming banshees would take it the minute I opened the door.



It was almost as bad as the time I watched The Blair Witch Project and sat in the car for over an hour when I returned home, but that's a story for another day.