We think he's a lost little guy...

 Along with being a (nocturnal) protected species, out in the middle of the day. 

Weird.

My mother and I were running some errands today when a neighbor (Brian) texted. He said that there's an owl at his front door, and it's one of those protected birds. He also sent a picture. 

Brian is one of those guys in the neighborhood that likes to ride his bike to the fishing pier on property and fish the things you can't keep. It's all catch and release here since the lakes are man made and you probably don't want to eat what's swimming in them as it is (gross water). 

So coming home to leave his bike at his front door, he saw the owl waiting to get in the house. Bad spotter if it has to alert its friends on the inside that the human is home. 

Obviously a poorly executed break in. 

Brian was able to get in his house, but the owl hid in the bushes. He texted a few people and by the time my mother and I got into our house, we didn't know if it was still there. She texted Brian and he said he thought it was, so I grabbed my (now old and a renewed product on Amazon) Canon EOS Rebel T7i with the stock lens and EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III Telephoto Zoom Lens (also renewed). Off we went to find the little guy. 

I think my camera is at the point now, where if I rush, the battery doesn't connect in the slot. When I walked up the walkway, I was trying to get my camera to turn on and it wouldn't. This happened when we went to Sanibel, too. 

As I'm fiddling with the battery and compartment, I scared the owl out of its hiding place in the bushes. I wish I had gotten it in semi mid flight, but when it landed in front of Brian's neighbor's door, I was able to get enough photos, that now I feel bad he's so lost. He obviously doesn't belong anywhere near here.

You don't normally see the owls out in the day time, but Cape Coral has an influx of the burrowing kind that will sometimes come out during the day to inspect the world. I'm sure there are plenty of videos still online if you look hard enough. 

As with all tech going awry, I know my photos are probably going to look horrible on other screens. I edited them in Photoshop CS 5 on a 10 year old HP Pavilion. I don't have the monitor calibrated to do solid photo editing, so apologies in advance that the owl may not look so hot. I really should start investing in real stuff if I'm going to keep posting and sharing my photos. 

- We interrupt this post for a commercial break - 

That's also what Ko-Fi is for. "Podcasts aren't cheap" and neither is photo editing. The likes and shares are awesome, but if readers expect more, please think about showing some appreciation by going to the Ko-Fi link. Everyone sends me private messages saying how awesome my stuff is, and I truly appreciate it. Don't get me wrong; I dig it when people make comments to my pages and send positivity in email form. It makes me want to do more work, 100%. But I cant get there without the proper equipment. My full time job is not in the visual world, so I don't have the right materials needed to make the magic happen. I try my hardest though, and it shows for sure. 

-Now back to our programming - 

So as of this post, I've got 29 owl photos to put up or I shut up. Again, I don't have my laptop monitor calibrated (which I guess Spyder systems are cheap enough, I can try to find a decent one on Amazon.. anyone have suggestions?) therefore, WYSIWYG. I did auto tune everything, so that might or might not work in my favor. 

It's funny; Tay and I were talking about some random things happening in our lives over the past few months to a year. He's had some unexplained things happen lately and he knows I've had my share as well. So the two of us commiserate together and try to offer advice on what can be done. 

The crazy part is... he was woken up at 2:15 in the morning last week, to what seemed like a horse neighing. He lives far from the country, so there's no way in hell that a horse is galloping down his street (in the hood) and having a go at waking up the neighbors. 

The Brockton Fair is demolished as of last year, I think, so gone are the days the carnival would be in town for the month.

As he recorded the sound to send to me, he wanted to see if I could figure it out. His email had a few expletives of question, and I responded back saying it has to be equine. 

Sure enough, we were both wrong. 

Last night, I received a message from him saying he researched the sound that has now woken him up several times. 

It was a screech owl. 

Apparently that's their thing. 

I haven't fact checked this, but according to Tay's research, screech owls can sound like horses under the right context. 

So what was my retort? 

Well... an owl in the treeline would make sense, given the whole mythology around them. 

They are supernaturally mystical in nature and oddly enough, would jive with recent events in Tay's life as of late. Plus, him telling me all this, coincides with the podcasts I've been listening to. 

I've been catching up on Ryan Sprague's Somewhere in the Skies podcast, and there was a conversation about owls. Again, there's a mythos behind owls and under normal circimustances, people relate them to the spooky season (Halloween), which also makes them part of the fantasy realm. How many science fiction moves or comics have you read where an owl is present? 

There's this whole sub genre of what owls really mean in context to when you're seeing them. 

Even while I was catching up on Season 10 of History Channel's Alone, one of the participants sees an owl and talks about it relating to their past. 

Something is happening, if all of a sudden this bird is showing up in places it wasn't before. I just can't fully explain everything, but I did tell Tay to think about it and do his own research into what it might mean for him. Maybe another episode or two of the stuff I'm listening to will talk more about this subject. 

It just goes to show you that you've got to be open about things and do your research. Read. Listen to conversations. Have conversations. Think outside the box. 

Until we can figure out how to get the owl somewhere safe... 

Stay cool, stay hydrated, hopefully the tropical storm coming will completely bypass us... 

Cheers;