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Wounded

The Injured Owl and Intuition

By Sarah Lynn JonesPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
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Owl injured behind my back fence September 2020

I’d gone in the house quickly to change clothes so that I’d have long sleeves over my arms and jeans to cover my legs. I chose an old army cold-gear physical training shirt to help me remember a time I’d discovered I was more capable than I’d ever believed myself to be. I wasn’t brave enough to try to catch the winged raptor without extra fabric over my skin as a precaution. However wounded he might be, he still made it clear that he had a lot of fight left in him. When I first went out to the back fence, the 5 dogs had stood checking him out and yelling their aggravation at his audacity to stand so close to their yard. His ruffled feathers stated clearly his own displeasure of the situation and he kept his golden eyes fixed on the biggest dog nearest the gate. He would occasionally sneak a glance quickly to see if there were any threats coming closer from the other side in his distraction. As he moved further away from the dogs, he held his wings arching up toward the sky—unable to take off; and high-stepped a little bit at a time with his feathered pants flittering about in the autumn breeze.

I corralled the dogs back into the house, then called and spoke to a lady from the Indiana Raptor Center about how to go about catching him for transport to a rehab facility. Unsure if it would suffice, I found a box I hoped would do the trick. The lady on the phone had said it was up to me if I used gloves or not, so I decided to take a pair outside with me and determined I would see how I felt about it when it came to approaching this majestic creature. The important part was to have a blanket or towel large enough to completely cover his head and wings, and preferably also his talons. Her instructions were to grasp him firmly from behind through the blanket with his wings pinned to his sides. As I walked in the house from the garage to ask my mom if she had any thoughts on a blanket she might not care to have back, she looked at me disapprovingly as she commented with an air of condescension to my grandmother on the phone line something about how her tender-hearted daughter thought she’d be able to save an owl just because she has birds that she’s had to catch before.

I puzzled over the emotion behind sentiment but found myself moving a little bit slower at the snarky feedback than I had been when the sense of urgency of getting my supplies for the wounded creature led me to move. Yes, I had considered how much frustration sometimes came from trying to catch my own birds when they were out and refusing to go easily back to their cages. Obviously a cockatiel’s size and strength bore no comparison to this massive owl behind the fence, but it at least made me consider the importance of having its head and wings covered when I went to attempt this maneuver. Never mind those talons I’d yet to see up close….

When I got back to the fence, I found the owl was gone. My uncle came over from adjoining family property and said he thought he saw the owl disappear back into another neighbor’s pasture land a couple lots down. I was flustered after I hopped the fence and meandered down the bank a few yards to see if I could find him again. Between the tall grasses, some low hanging tree branches and a no trespassing sign, I gave up the search; dejected at another failed opportunity to do something worthwhile when the time arose. As I walked back to the house, a thought crossed my mind—what might I learn from this situation? I’d recently become adamant about believing that I am always exactly where I am meant to be and when I am supposed to be there. I frequently remind myself that there is always something to be learned. I remembered the ongoing love of owls that I’ve had for as long as I can remember and the wisdom they seemed to represent. From my early years I found myself on a quest to learn as much as I could about life so that I might be able to help others later on through my own experiences. I’d amassed quite a collection of owl memorabilia that I picked up or that friends or family members had gotten with me in mind over the years because of that fascination. Everything from figurines to stuffed animals, wooden carved pictures to books, storage hooks, boxes, holiday décor, a laundry hamper, toothbrush holder, stationary sets, coloring books, decorative candles, shirts, leggings, socks, pajamas, garden planters, the list goes on.

I remembered the quote I’d come across recently after looking up some symbolism after a dream. “The owl spirit animal is emblematic of a deep connection with wisdom and intuitive knowledge.” -Elena Harris (https://www.spiritanimal.info/owl-spirit-animal/).

Intuition—now that was something I had been working on a lot throughout the previous year! Only months before I had walked away from my best friend of 15 years after she finally verbalized that she didn’t trust my judgment and I realized I didn’t want someone of that attitude with me on my next adventure, it had taken long enough for me to learn to trust myself, without any naysayers input. My recent divorce had forced my hand on my old life and now that I was back living under my parents’ roof at 37 years of age, I was much more particular about who I wanted to allow on my path with me. Without saying another word about what was going on in my life, I walked away from our friendship and didn’t look back. Then, only 3-5 weeks before the appearance of this wounded owl, there was a morning I had gotten up for work with a heavy sense of dread about going. I continued on my morning routine, unable to shake the feeling but also not seeing any reason why there would be an issue. I was also unsure if I would be able to sit out only a couple hours of the day or if I would be inclined to take the entire 10 hour day, so I decided to save my hours for another day. I was less than 5 minutes away from the factory parking lot on a road I’d only recently started taking due to road construction having my main routes blocked off completely when one my new favorite songs, “Parasite Eve” by Bring Me the Horizon, came on the radio.

“YESSSSSSS!!!” I proclaimed as I turned up the radio to feel the bass hit louder and realized I would have time to hear the entire song before I got out of the borrowed Ford Escape to go to the building to clock in. What a great start to the day! I found myself in the first 90 degree curve of a road with a deep s-curve to it, with the sun coming up trickling through the trees surrounding the road, when I realized the school bus coming in the opposite lane out of its own first curve wasn’t stopping to give me space to get out of my first curve before going into its second curve of the s.

“Are you effing kidding me right now?!?!” I said angrily as I watched the school bus continue on as though the driver thought the center of the bus would somehow magically bend and stay in the northbound lane only. I turned the music down and came to a complete stop as I realized I was getting ready to get hit and felt sick as I started to wonder if my morning would see me at the top of a vehicle on its side in the ditch trying to climb out the driver’s side window if this stupid yellow school bus knocked me off the side of the road. I hadn’t paid attention to how tight my grip on the steering wheel of the SUV had become in preparation, but angry thoughts hesitated as I heard a kid on the bus yell to the bus driver “you’re not going to make it! You’re going to hit her!” right as the bus scraped up against my driver’s side mirror, pinning the door closed. I watched, immensely irritated, as I realized she had not only hit me but was continuing to try to make it through the curve, still not apparently realizing that a standard sized school bus does not bend.

As the bus finally came to a complete halt, I picked up my cell phone to dial 9-1-1 to let them know there was an accident, I was stuck in a curve unable to go anywhere with how I had been hit but I was pretty sure there were no injuries as it had been an incredibly slow speed accident with me coming to a stop and the bus having slowed way down to try to continue through it. I ended up not only missing one of my new favorite songs and not making it work on time, I ended up making it to work a solid 2 hours late after having firefighters show up and help me get the SUV out of the curve, sitting while the police showed up, waiting to go through their paperwork and get statements from me and the other driver, seeing the school district’s representation show up at the scene and also get the busload of middle school kids onto another bus to go about their school day. When I finally pulled into the factory parking lot, I called my mom to notify her of the accident since it was one of their vehicles that they’d been loaning me as my approach to pushing my ex-husband to sign the divorce paperwork in a timely fashion had meant that I chose to sacrifice material goods in avoidance of having to deal with his abusive antics more than the 7 years with him in my life had set me up for. I had figured—I got my dogs and my birds out of it and some reptiles of my choosing, and things were replaceable. So he kept his 3 vehicles, the house and a bunch of my personal belongings as I took my freedom and the loves of my life along with me.

I told my supervisor when I had gotten to work that morning that from then on, I was going to choose my intuition regardless of what it meant for my cog in the machine job on any day. He had confirmed that that was always the correct plan. “I will never fault you for going with your gut… that is always the most important thing.”

As I walked back to the house disappointed at the failed attempt to maybe feel like I had an important role for the greater good for this owl, I realized my intuition over the past year, and really for the greater part of my life, had in many ways been like this injured owl that had graced my path. Whether it was something a family member said, or an outright decision to ignore my gut when I felt like I needed to pursue a particular path –I kept finding myself in positions I didn’t want to be in all because I didn’t follow through with my inner guidance system in spite of what was otherwise going on. That owl was my intuition—damaged and unable to soar at its usual heights due to outside influence; and, as I’d been unable to help him after finding he had disappeared, reminding me that my intuition, too, “disappears” (if only briefly) when wounded by my distrust of it.

Nature
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About the Creator

Sarah Lynn Jones

Sarah is a writer, blogger, storyteller, poet, dreamer, healer, mystic, artist, hopeful, and lover of life who is passionate about telling stories to help others seek healing and acceptance in their own lives and journeys.

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