Omen by Sara Wright

I was driving down the road when I noticed a dead owl. Sun glare blinded me, but I stopped to identify the bird.

It has been many years since I picked up dead owls on the road – thirty five years in all. I began this practice of bringing home the bodies of these creatures when I first moved to the mountains. Finding so many dead owls in a brief span of five years was frightening, but someone in me knew that I needed to honor these Harbingers of Night. Yet the last thing I wanted was to be identified or aligned with an owl, so my behavior rose out a body that never lies. Visions of my mother’s love of owls clouded my mind. Within months of this mountain move a Navajo Medicine woman informed me that I had Owl as a Familiar. Horrified, I resisted mightily. Yet despite what seemed like a curse, I was still compelled to sculpt owl pots out of clay for five years. The losses I endured during this time changed the course of my life.

 I taught myself how to dismember owls. I burned owl remains in my woodstove as a symbol of deep respect and out of fear. I always kept feathers and wings in honor of these mysterious night beings not understanding why.

 I had learned by then that owls and women were linked in most world mythologies through the Seasons and Circles of Time. Often perceived as symbols of wisdom, or keepers of omens and prophecy, some, especially great horned owls were also seen as messengers of death.

My mother, a talented artist, loved great horned owls and drew them frequently. Because I was terrified of my mother, I associated all owls as part of her and consequently I feared those images as a small child. My attitude towards all owls continued throughout adult life.

 When I moved into my cabin a pair of barred owls moved here too. They hunted in the deciduous trees at dusk. Because they weren’t great horned owls, and I was no longer finding dead owls I experienced less fear and watched the pair hunt with fascination, learning a lot about their behavior. They were such magnificent birds to watch and when they struck their prey with needle sharp talons instant death occurred. Mercifully. Nightly conversation increased throughout the winters and those intimate calls almost soothed me. Sadly. within a relatively short period of time most of the trees surrounding my property were logged so the barred owls left too. Trees and owls belong together; I missed them both.

 Recently barred owls returned to this small sanctuary probably because I have a grove of older trees and plenty of water. In the intervening years (unlike everyone around me),I allowed the forest to reclaim her sovereignty having come to the belief that s/he/ki knew more than I ever could what worked and what didn’t.

Last spring barred owls serenaded me both night and day while I struggled to navigate intolerable grief. The worst human betrayal that I had ever experienced occurred on ‘good friday’ of 2025.  Much worse, my beloved dogs and dearest companions were slipping away. Both would be dead by mid-summer.

Gradually, I began to sense/feel that these daily barred owl calls might be witnessing my grief as compassionate beings. Yet I still resisted being identified or aligned with any owl. All spring I held the contradiction like a prayer.

However, I was rapidly approaching 80, so I had also been paying attention to what happened whenever I heard any owl call for most of my life (albeit unwillingly). Great horned owl hoots always meant trouble often preceding death (a great horned owl called thirteen times before my mother died), but barred owl calls blurred my senses.

When I picked up the bird at dusk, I was first relieved that it wasn’t a great horned owl whose hoots or bodies always precede messages that I never want to hear. Then I wept, driving home.

 After heartrending dismemberment, I placed three feathers on a shell under my indoor ‘tree of life’ (Norfolk pine). Instead of turning my star -lights off I left them on and although they are fading four days later as batteries lose power that tree continues to bear witness for this owl, and the senseless killing of barred owls occurring across the country. Unimaginable grief.  The only awareness I held in the beginning was that I was repeating an old behavior with another dead owl after a thirty-five-year break.

 I missed the obvious. Two days previously a thirty-seven-year-old woman, mother of three and peaceful protestor was shot dead in the head by an ICE agent who called her a fucking bitch.

Something snapped in many of us with Renee Good’s slaughter. Any woman who disagrees with ICE can end up dead. It must be said that all the missing Indigenous women or millions of women and children suffering and dying around the world never got the press like this one American White Woman did.  

As I continue to reflect on the experience, I am struck by the link between finding a dead owl after thirty-five years, the slaughter of owls in general, and this dead woman. They are intimately related, acknowledged or not.

Will this woman’s death open a door that has been shut? I fervently hope it will. It certainly wasn’t for barred owls.

Harbingers of grief – woman grief. Animal grief. All of it.

 There is no point in bringing up the radical decline of non – human species except to say that barred owls are slated for slaughter – a half a million or more are in the process of or will be killed to save the spotted owl by so called ‘conservationists’. My response to this monstrosity was at first disbelief and then, gradually, profound ongoing grief that continues to this day.

The night after bringing owl home and taking a knife to ki, I dreamed that Coalie and I were on Coastal Route 1 traveling North, the Spirit World for Indigenous Peoples in every culture I know.

It’s mid-January. A gentle rain falls. Too dangerous to walk, but this morning as I peered at raindrops that fell like crystal tears, I realized I knew exactly what to do with what was left of my owl’s remains. Sloshing with care through frozen ground and old snow I gently placed ki in the lower branch of a balsam, the evergreen ‘light bringer’. Today, because of the rain there is a thaw and ki’s needles are a brilliant emerald green.

 I am profoundly grateful to have had this owl experience. On a personal level I feel something akin to personal peace because not all owls are forecasting death, and if they are some have a compassionate gaze, which makes all the difference. That prophecy and omens are a given. These qualities have been demonstrated by my life experiences and dreams.

As a naturalist, ecologist, ethologist I am continuously amazed at how nature intercedes weaving the personal into the collective and back again with a tree bird or stone, if only we paid  closer attention…

I close with the words I spoke to the owl as I put ki’s remains into a brown paper bag.

 ‘I will keep the spirit of you near not just to thank you for compassionate witnessing but because parts of you belong to me.’ I am my mother’s daughter after all. I may be a Cassandra who will never be believed, but what’s important here is to continue the weave.

Postscript: No doubt most readers will be skeptical about this story and the conclusions I have drawn but few in western culture have developed the kind of relationship that I have with the rest of nature, so how can they possibly make a judgment or know?