Friday, my boys were off from school for the Easter holiday break. About mid-afternoon, I looked out our back window and saw a white patch in a tree at the edge of the field behind us. The landscape is slowly greening up but the trees have not leafed out yet so seeing something pure white mid-way up a tree was odd. I wondered what it could be so I got out my binoculars and look a long look. Ah, it was still too far away. We have another pair of binoculars – a “real” pair, not the child’s pair I was using initially, so I dug those out of their resting place in the front closet. Back at the window, the white “thing” was still in the tree, but its shape had shifted. Now, I knew it was alive, just as I thought!
Staring, dialing in and out of focus using the binoculars, I stood at our living room window for 10-15 minutes, looking for clues about what was in that tree behind our house. This also required a lot of blinking, as my contacts did not respond to being shoved up against a glass lens as I peered into the eyepiece. In the meantime, my fifteen year old asked what I was up to. When I told him, I spilled what had been on my mind.
“I think there might be a snowy owl in that tree back there, by the edge of the field,” I told him, excitedly!
“Seriously? Mom.” he replied, shaking his head. But, he got up off the couch to take a look. My boys are used to my nature–based escapades and frequently indulge my thoughts, if only to prove me wrong, as time permits. At this point, I went to get my camera to try to zoom in close enough to prove it was indeed an owl, a snowy owl!
The camera didn’t help, but then my son said, “Do you want me to go out there and take a closer look?”
“Sure,” I said. “Take the binoculars with you.”
A few minutes later, he was waving to me. I went outside, taking the camera with me, hopeful. He shouted something. I couldn’t hear it.
“What is it?” I shouted back.
“Well, it’s not an owl, mom. It’s our neighbor’s cat!”
A half hour spent – looking, wondering, snapping photos, enlisting the help of a reluctant teen and hoping, just to find out the white patch in the tree behind our house was our neighbor’s cat!
What a hoot!
Oh, yeah. Our neighbors do have a white cat. Obviously, I was hoping for something more exciting.
The Apples in My Orchard 
You had me wondering. And I could almost hear your son’s skepticism!
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Ha! What a funny Slice! Darn, I wish it was a snowy owl, too. Did the white cat ever get down?!
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That was a hoot! And I’d have done the same thing for a look at any type of owl. 🙂
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