Owl and Bats in Early Spring ~ Urban Pastoral #7

Dell deChant, published 9 December 2013

 

A Great Horned Owl came by the farm this morning.  I heard its deep and eerie call around 3:00 AM.  I have heard this sound before, but never so loud, so powerful, so close.  It seemed to be coming from the bat lodge, and I heard the bats screaming.   The deep night was alive with sounds of peril, predation and panic: owl hooting, bats crying, like a hundred babies being born, their mammalian wings flailing against the sides of the lodge.  

 

 

Who hears these ancient sounds today?  Bishop Berkeley, who hears the Great Horned Owl in the Florida night, and the terrified cries of its prey?  Who sees bats in the moon's half-light, set against the mid-spring stars, their lodge seeming suspended in the night sky between Deneb, Vega, and Altair? 

 

 

Shining the light of my flashlight at the lodge revealed the bats dancing in the air all around the lodge, dozens of them screaming and scrambling to get inside.  I never saw the owl, only heard its voice -- eerie to me, menacing and deadly to the bats. I wonder if they saw the owl or only heard its call.  I wonder if they heard it more than once.  

 

 

Finches in the Spring

by Dell deChant, 7 March 2013

 

Just now, I am looking out of my office widow at the uppermost branches of the live oaks, forty-five feet from the

ground, virescent with new growth and dusted with pollen; and then, between the branches, amid the pollen's golden powder in the last bright blaze of day, I see the flutter of a tiny bird, and then a host, and then the branches filled with finches — as golden as the light, as light as the pollen, but with no less volition than all the other signs of spring.   

 

 

 

My Friend Harvesting Loquats Late in the Season

by Dell deChant

 

My friend leaned out across the leaves of the loquat tree, reaching for the last fruits we might yet collect on this mild afternoon of lingering Spring.  We were already late for this harvest, with most of the fruit long past maturity.  How fast time passes for fruit in this family– from bud to flower, to ripe, to rot. Only last week, the tree was dense with bright orange fruit, firm and full and sweet.  And now, my friend had to balance precariously on a ladder, reach too far to grasp a branch, pull it close, cut the cluster of fruit, only to find one or two not yet too old for use. Next time we harvest here, we will start earlier in the year.