Owl Sex

...yes, that says what you think it says...

Last night, after a long day of shopping and making decisions, I wearily reached for the dental floss, the bathroom door open behind me as Terry sat at the desk strumming his guitar.

You see, I really don't like shopping, not much at all with an exception or two, and I hadn't been doing regular shopping, I'd been doing wedding shopping, which, I'm sure you can imagine, carried more stress inducing possibility than most shopping excursions. There was a dress fitting (during which I tried on my dress, walked out into the room with the mirrors and box to stand on, and thought, oh no. I don't like it. The fact that I took a deep breath, blamed it on hormones and/or low blood sugar, remained silent and moved on is beside the point. Not liking it was a bit scary, and again, stress inducing), shoe shopping for the all-important wedding shoes (which are sitting in my closet, unconfirmed as the ones), searching for the right jewelry and a couple of gifts to mail out (you'll now who you are when something comes in your mailbox!), and halfway successfully something to eat that wouldn't make me nauseous (going uber healthy makes you basically physically unable to eat nasty food - you get sick. Good for the abs, bad for the mood) which ended up with a bottle of Kombucha sitting next to me in a car cupholder that took an HOUR to open because of unruly fizz...

Let's continue.

So I was reaching for the floss.

T was strumming his guitar, learning a new song.

-Charis! Listen!

I turned around and came a couple of steps into the room.

-Huh? (I was tired and grumpy and by God just wanted to brush my teeth, take off my makeup and crawl into bed, maybe play some Sudoku, and hit dream land)

That's when I heard it. T ran the pick across the strings then laid his fingers across, silencing the guitar hum. A moment later, I heard a hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo coming from outside.

An owl! So cool.

Then silence.

Terry plucked a string or two, then silenced the guitar. Another call.
-I think he's talking back to me!

And the owl was. This continued on for some minutes, with us getting more excited by each interchange, and wondering where the owl actually was - it had to be sitting in a tree outside one of our windows. So we shut off all the lights in the room and quietly opened the wooden blinds, trying to peer out into the sliver-mooned darkness and see our new friend.

That's when it happened.

There wasn't just one owl, now there were two! We realized this as the guitar went forgotten on the desk chair and we crowded the windows, trying to see, listening to a conversation between the owls.

-Maybe they're mating! I said. By mating I meant courting - like when you see birds chasing each other and tangling in the sky, their joy nearly tangible.

T thought I was being more literal with my words.
-Owl sex. The words came with assurance out of the darkness beside me, and after a beat or two, my knees buckled and I nearly slid to the floor consumed by silent giggles.

They were sounding more urgent, after all.

We looked at each other, eyes wide, as the calls continued, more in sequence.

About then we decided to give the frisky owls their privacy and I made my way back over to the light switch, after telling T that his last words would be the title of my blog post the next morning.

And so they were.

The end.

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