The Search for Owls

I was outside walking around the garage last night. I was getting a few bags of pellets to bring inside. I grabbed two bags, threw them over my shoulder and walked them into the house. Since we go through pellets kind of fast, I figured I better head back out to the garage to grab two more bags.

On my way back to the garage, I stopped to take a look at the back yard. It was very dark because of the clouds at night, but since it wasn’t that cold out, I enjoyed the moment.

I had a strange thought as I was standing there. I asked myself if I’d ever gone for a walk in the woods at night in Maine. Since I answered in the negative, I thought it was high time I did. So I got the pellets, brought them inside and ran upstairs to tell Laura that we were headed into the woods. She said, “Ooh, we can see if there are any owls.” Since I hadn’t thought of that as a goal – I was merely wanting to do something I’ve never done before – I agreed. An owl hunt was a fine challenge.

I’m going to tell you something here. Walking in the woods at night is freaky. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve walked through those woods during the daylight hours, something changes at night. Especially when it’s pitch black out and there’s wet snow on the ground. You kind of get the feeling there’s some scary animal behind every tree just waiting to eat you.

Of course we both brought our cameras. We got some of the worst pictures we’ve ever taken. Only a few came out and even they have nothing to do with anything. But, since this is a blog about that kind of stuff, I think I’ll post them.

Before I do though, I’ll let you know that we didn’t find any owls. The most we came across were some deer tracks and tracks of what we suspect was a coyote, a wolf, a dog or a tiny bear. Maybe even a big fox. I’m going with the tiny bear or big fox.

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Just a random picture of my shoes before we headed out. I wanted to take a picture of something in case we didn’t come back.

This is the deer track I was talking about above. It seems like it was so much more clear last night. Our cameras don’t really do the greatest job in the dark.

In order to get back to the clearing in the woods, we had to continuously scan the ground with our flashlights. We also had to keep our eyes on the trees in order to find what we actually went in there for – owls.

Tell me this doesn’t totally look like something out of “The Blair Witch Project.” Talk about creepy. And all it is is a small broken down old hunting shack or fort.

We thought we’d see at least something up in the branches of one of the big White Pines. Nope. Nothing. Not even a whisper.