The Wisdom of the Owl

Wally was born in the forest, far to the north of the city. He grew up beside his three brothers and under the watchful eye of his mother, but he always felt different from the rest.

Where his brothers took to the normal raccoon interests of expanding their territory, Wally couldn’t care less; he found trees monotonous and oppressive. While his brothers were always looking for food and working out so they could bulk up and make themselves impressive to females, Wally preferred to subsist on only a simple diet of berries and nuts, eating just enough to get by. And most noticeably of all, when they reached maturity, his brothers only cared about the size of their penis bones, and how many females they could mate with in a single day. Wally had no interest the females, which insulted them. There were no other raccoons like Wally in the forest, and no one seemed to want to be his friend.

When their mother let them know it was time for them to branch out and find their own territories, his brothers set off together for a den they had heard tell of several kilometres away. They didn’t want Wally with them, and he wanted to go with them even less.

“Mother,” he said one morning soon after they left, when they were washing their paws in the creek. “Is there something wrong with me?”

“There are no mistakes in nature,” she said. “You are exactly as you are meant to be.”

“But are you not ashamed of me, that I’m so different from the others?”

“Wally, my dear son,” his mother said. “From the time you left my body, I have been nothing but proud of you.”

She tickled him behind his ears, bringing out the winning smile she saw too rarely on his face.

“If the forest doesn’t make you happy, you should leave. Take one final piece of advice from your old mother: Go south, to the city. You will find other raccoons like yourself there, and wonders you could never dream of.”

“Won’t you miss me?” Wally hated the pleading note in his voice.

“I miss all my kits,” his mother said. “But that is the way of nature, and there are no mistakes. When you go to the city, you will have expanded our territory further than any of your brothers, and that will make me proud to think on.”

The two of them engaged in affectionate behaviour for a short time, then Wally said his goodbyes and set off on the next part of his journey.

And so it was that Wally came to the city. The first few weeks were very hard, but in time Wally found an apartment in a laneway garage and got a job as a mascot for a small airline that operated from downtown.

For the most part he liked his life of photo shoots and press junkets, walking red carpets and hobnobbing with other mascots and celebrities at private clubs. But sometimes, holding a $24 cocktail and saying the same slogans the marketing team had provided for him, over and over, he would think of his brothers in the forest and wonder how they’d fared. And sometimes, watching couples display affection and leave together in Ubers, he felt lonely, and wondered if he ever really would meet another raccoon like him, as his mother had promised.

The other raccoons he did meet were gravely disappointing. Often in a back alley while scrounging for Thai, Chinese, or Indian food—Wally found he enjoyed these cuisines, of which there was an abundant supply—he would come across other raccoons. Many were mad with distemper or rabies, some recognized him and hated him for being a sellout to their species, and almost all were vicious and territorial. Only rarely did Wally find one who was at all friendly, let alone a male who would want to engage in mating behaviour with him. These encounters brought Wally some fleeting pleasure, but the raccoons never wanted to come to his den or even to see him again, and without fail they would set off in search of new territory before dawn broke, never to return.

One day, Wally was at a party thrown by the CEO of a new light-rail transit system that was making a bid to build in the city, a project that would span twenty years and cost billions of dollars. The party was the typical sea of blank, uninterested faces, and Wally installed himself near a plate of chicken satay skewers and proceeded to eat his feelings of loneliness and existential despair.

And then he saw them: in the corner, standing together, two raccoons, a male and a female, sipping Veuve Clicquot. Wally went over to them straight away.

Raton was a model for the movies—his body was the basis for Rocket in Guardians of the Galaxy, one of Wally’s favourite films, and he spoke with a devastating Quebecois accent. Wally was so attracted to him that it took all his self-control not to extend his penis bone right then and there at the party.

Raiguma was the most captivating female Wally had ever seen, with pale fur and eye rings that extended all the way to her ears. She was a set designer, had been born in Japan, and was travelling throughout North America to find her ancestral village.

“Our kind is considered invasive in Japan,” she told him. “The country was importing over 2,000 raccoons a year, back in the late seventies and early eighties. It was a pet craze. That’s how my ancestors came to Japan, in cages.”

When she spoke about it, Wally could see the anger in her eyes. “I didn’t know about this,” he said.

“Sadly, few raccoons over here do,” she said. “There are so many of us in Japan now, we’ve had to occupy almost all of the ancient temples. In some regions they slaughter us, just to keep our numbers down.”

Their conversation continued for hours, even as the party wound down around them. After many drinks, feeling uninhibited, Wally asked the question he had been desperately running through his mind all night: “Are you two mate-bonded?”

They laughed kindly.

“I only couple with females,” Raiguma said. “And Raton prefers males. But we share a den, and we love each other deeply.”

That night, Wally left in a cab with his new friends. He and Raton engaged in mating behaviour, and afterwards they engaged in affectionate behaviour. Raton found the spot behind Wally’s ears that made him smile, and when they nuzzled and cuddled each other to sleep, Wally felt warm and happy.

After many blissful months together, the three raccoons decided that they wanted to raise a litter of kits. They wanted to nurture a family of raccoons who knew the city as home, who would understand interspecies multiculturalism and grow up tasting foods from all over the world.

Raton knew a domesticated and deglanded skunk who belonged to an IVF doctor, and knew how to help them with insemination. They decided both Wally and Raton would provide semen, and the three of them would raise the kits together.

When Raiguma’s belly started to grow, Wally could hardly contain his excitement. Not too long ago he had felt condemned to live his life alone, and now he was expecting a litter he would nurture and love along with his lover and their best friend. Each of them rushed home from work now and made alterations to their den in anticipation of the kits. They made a nest of shredded newspaper, and placed Styrofoam lids from takeout containers against the beams of the garage attic to help keep out the cold. They hung mobiles and made rattles from avocado skins and cherry pits. They stored up food so that Raiguma would have enough to eat in the first few weeks when the babies would be blind and unable to hear, before they would be able to take the kits out and teach them to forage.

One night soon after, Wally was awoken from his sleep by Raiguma’s sounds of distress. The kits were about to be born! Wally nuzzled Raton and squeezed his shoulders with his paws.

“Wake up, Raton,” he said. “It’s time.”

Raton and Wally went to Raiguma’s side. They held her hands and gave her sips of sugar water out of a hummingbird feeder they had stolen. Wally thought of his mother and how she had done this very same thing for him and his all brothers. Raiguma struggled valiantly, and she pushed five kits out into the world, three males and two females.

But the babies lay there, unmoving, side by side. Naked and pink and helpless, without fur, they were born still.

None of them stirred. None of them breathed.

The three parents cried themselves to the point of exhaustion. They licked the bodies clean. They memorized each little face, and felt each little body with the most sensitive parts of their paws. Then they tried to decide what to do.

Raton called a bear he knew whose sister had lost a cub; Wally called a hotline he had seen advertised on the subway. The hotline told Wally his call was important and would be answered in sequence as soon as the next volunteer agent was available. The bear told Raton, “Your whole family should go to see the old barn owl who lives in the dilapidated ruins of Pembrooke Farm—she is wise and may be able to comfort you in your grief.”

So they wrapped the bodies of their babies up and carried them on their backs. They arrived at the weathered, hollowed-out barn just after midnight, in the witching hour. They approached the owl, perched white and weightless high above them like a plastic bag stuck on a wire.

“Who, who, who,” the owl asked. “Who dares to approach my lair?”

The three raccoons spoke their names.

“Snivelling quadrupeds,” the owl said. “Ground-sniffers. All day I have laboured at the pharmacy, counting pills and coins, bills and bottles, and interfacing with the world of humans. Though it is not natural for an owl to feel so at night, I am tired beyond words, and my unchecked hunger knows no bounds. Why do you disrupt my solitude?”

“Our litter has been born dead,” Wally said. “We come to you seeking whatever wisdom you might give us.”

The owl swooped down and stood before them, a fearsome bird, larger than they were.

“You may each ask one question,” the owl said. “And I will answer it truthfully. But if you would have me ease your minds and give succour to your souls, you must tend to my gnawing stomach. If you will have my wisdom, the price must be paid in flesh.”

The three raccoons looked at each other. Desperate, almost mad with their grief, they solemnly nodded their assent.

Raiguma approached the owl first, with two kits in her arms, a boy and a girl. She laid them down before the owl, whose eyes glowed copper like pennies in the night.

“Wise owl,” Raiguma said. “What did I do wrong?” She was thinking about a drink she had to celebrate right after they had inseminated, and a cup of caffeinated coffee she snuck at work after a night when cramps had kept her up, and the unpasteurized cheeses and cured sandwich meats the three of them had shared not a week before the birth.

The owl regarded Raiguma coolly. With a duck of her head and a sickening swallow, the owl ate the first kit. Then she grabbed the second kit in her beak and crunched its soft bones down her throat in three gulps.

“Miserable mammal,” the owl said. “You have never known what it is to cherish and protect an egg. You grow your babies inside you like tumours. Do you think you are so powerful that you can alter the course of life as it has unfolded for eons? No, woman, you did nothing wrong. In this tragedy, you are blameless. It is your place to suffer, but do not ask why.”

The second to approach was Raton. He held two kits in his arms, a girl and a boy. He laid them down before the owl, knowing he would never hold them again.

“Wise owl,” Raton said. “What kind of life would my babies have lived?” He was thinking of all the things he would never get to do with them, the first steps he would never see, the intricate joys of discovery he would never know through his children’s eyes.

The owl wasted no time dispatching the two kits down her gullet. Raton had to wait as she adjusted her feathers, and he thought she suppressed a belch.

“The male would have lived a good life,” the owl said. “He would have had many kits of his own, and they would have formed a band of family singers that would have toured all over the world.”

The owl blinked her large, amber eyes. “But the female, she would have caught distemper and wandered into a human backyard. The humans would have called animal control, which would have taken her in a net at the height of her distress, and euthanized her on a stainless steel table, and incinerated her remains.”

Raton took small steps back into the shadows, shaking with tears, and slumped into Raiguma’s arms.

It would be the last time she held him.

A few weeks later, Raton and Wally will be eating a quiet meal together and Raiguma will come home to their apartment after several days of being out. She won’t say anything but they will smell right away that she is pregnant. She will see on their faces that they know, and that the litter isn’t theirs, and she will begin to cry.

“I’m so sorry,” she will say. “It was instinct. I just couldn’t resist it. The urges were so strong.”

“It’s okay,” Raton will coo at her. “It doesn’t matter if the babies aren’t ours; we can raise them all together anyway.” He will look to Wally for reassurance, and Wally will nod vigorously.

“No,” Raiguma will say. “I’m sorry. I am too far from my homeland, and for me this territory holds neither luck nor joy. I am taking my leave of you and returning to Japan to start my family.”

After they all cry for a while, Raton and Wally will help her pack her bags, and take her to the airport. As they watch her plane rise into the sky like a giant white metal bird, they will hold each other’s hands.

Wally was the third to approach the owl, the final, smallest kit in his arms, a boy. He placed his son lovingly on the grass before the monstrous bird.

“Wise owl,” Wally said. “My friends and I are different from our litter-mates. Each of us has left home and journeyed far from all we knew, in search of something better. This is how we found each other and how we set out to create a family of our own.”

“Ask your question,” said the owl.

“I shall,” Wally said. “Is what my mother told me true, that nature makes no mistakes?” He was thinking, for the first time in a long time, of the smell of pine sap after rain, and of his brothers wrestling before a meal. He was thinking of his mother’s paws on the spot behind his ears.

The question hung between them in the air. Wally could hear Raton and Raiguma taking ragged breaths; he could see the chest of the owl rise and fall; his own breath whistled in his ears. Only the child was still.

The owl devoured her final prize. She locked her inscrutable gaze on the mournful raccoon before her.

“Yes,” she said finally. “Your mother’s words are true.”

Then she soared back up to her perch, and the night returned to silence.