Friday, March 21, 2008

GANGLAND

Our house is located in the middle of one of the oldest, "old growth-forests" in Cincinnati, Parker Woods. I have lived in my house for four years and I have never seen head nor "hoot" of an owl near our house. I knew they had to be there, in fact, I had heard them in the distant corners of the woods, but had not seen nor heard any in our backyard.

Well, NOT ANYMORE.

Apparently our little corner of the woods has become some sort of "den of vice" for owls looking to procreate, or maybe to engage in more nefarious shenanigans?

The owls, oh boy, the owls! They are loud and they sound scary! Especially if you have never been five feet away from two owls having some sort of "discussion."

The first night I heard the chaos was last Sunday while Mr. Hotbuns was still out of town and the little ones were at their mom's house. I was all ALONE in my very dark bedroom.... by myself....TOTALLY ALONE....Except for the cat. I was awakened by this very loud "OOH OOH OOH!" and then the sound of very large, very powerful, wings flapping right out side the window. (Though at the time it seemed like this was going on right in front of my face.) This disturbing ruckus made me think there was a Ring Wraith outside of my window on a flying dragon.

Then I heard ""OOH OOH OOH!!!!!!!""" again followed by a high pitched, Fozzy Bear, "WAKKA WAKKA WAKKA WAKKA!" and then some more, pretty serious, flapping noises.
It sounded like a duel between two cracked out unicorns.

The thought running through my mind?

"Yo' ass is grass, Frodo Baggins."

After I was done crapping the bed, I grew baby balls, big enough to come out from under the covers and look out of the window. As soon as I peered out towards the yard, two, GIANT OWLS flew right in front of my window! I could detail their feathers, they were so close.... I jumped back, fearing I was going to get "winged" in the face, they were so close.... Which, in turn, sent me back under the bed.

After I self talked myself out of my panic, I finally came out from under the bed, on a mission to figure out what the hell just happened. I approached the window, trying to remain brave, I could see the perpetrators on top of our shed sharing a tender moment... or so I thought was a tender moment.

I felt a wave of relief and crawled back under the covers. I mean, I had THE ENTIRE BED to myself, I needed to enjoy it. As I awoke the next morning, I had pretty much forgotten about the incident and went about my day. I chose to look at the bright side, I have owls humping in my backyard....This only means baby owls and I am a sucker for "baby" anything.

Well last night as I laid in bed, feeling total relaxation setting into my entire body, my mellow was totally crashed by the sound of Mr. Hotbuns running up the stairs calling for me:

"There is something really fucking weird going on! Oh My God!"


I sat up startled thinking that our house was possibly being taken over by the band of Mormon missionaries who live up the street, or that our drunken, crazy, neighbor set his hair on fire again, when I heard:

"WAKKA WAKKA WAKKA!"

Oh fantastic! The horny owls were back, fucking the night away on my shed. I prayed they would just freaking get it over with and be off smoking cigarettes somewhere, commenting on how great each other were before midnight. After some more furios flapping and beak clacking, they both took flight to finish the dance of night someplace else.

After the two love birds made their get away, Mr. Hotbuns and I started to discuss what had just happened and how tonight was NOTHING compared to the boisterous love making of the night before.

However, we were both kind of stricken with a sense that there was no love between these two creatures of the night, unless owls, unlike what we had been under the impression of before, really liked it rough.

What do you do when you are in doubt? Well, I don't know what you do, but I certainly turn to "Google" when I am in a knowledge pickle.

Unfortunately, after some extensive Googling and Wikipedia-ing, we were faced with a very harsh realization: What we mistakenly thought were owls caught in the throes of love, were actually owls in the middle of a turf war.
Perfect.
We were living in the South Central of the nocturnal world and my house is located right on Crenshaw.

Totally awesome.