Midnight Callers: 12 o'clock and all's well

I felt presided over.

They were just outside our window on the north side of our house, just over our heads. By the sounds of them, one was roosting in the neighbor's pine across the road, though I can't imagine that as a good place to roost, and one was even closer, probably up around the electric pole that marks the boundary with our neighbor to the west. They were close. I was tempted to get up and shine them, just to see their gold-ring irises grow large in the light.

No doubt they were a mated pair, one with a slightly deeper hoot than the other, but both rhythmically hoot-hoo-hooting as if catching up after a week's separation.

How to interpret these two icons of the night, calling to each other at veritable midnight? Eerily foreboding? Love birds hung over from Valentine's day?

Assurance. And that sense of being presided over.

I've heard these owls--or owls with the same pattern of hooting that I'd roll the dice and call a great horned owl--here before, seemingly yearly, stretching back for I'd guess about four years. I'm also not sure about an owl's lifespan, but either way, hearing them again is good sign: either hunting is good enough to produce long life or it's good enough to produce offspring.

But why do I care? Aside from the novelty of a winged predator out my window, the calls of these owls connote something much deeper. Hearing them gently hooting to each other tells me that some network of sustenance that I don't see persists on planet earth, and that, it seems to me, is good for all of us.

I'm reminded of the rabbit problem that developed last spring in the neighborhood. Our beans got stripped, denuded to bare stalk by a brood of young Peter Cottontails. I killed one with a pellet gun and swore I wouldn't do it again, then proceeded to knock off two more. Still, no doubt there's a decent business to be done in rabbits around town for those on the upper rungs of the food chain, but I haven't helped things any. Next year, I'm determined to sacrifice a few beans.

If it means I get a chorus of hoots next midwinter, it'll be worth it.