Humiliated by Angus Gardner

I was incredibly lucky to come across a Tawny owlet on the forest floor in the woods behind my house. It couldn’t fly - my guess was that it had fallen from its nest, perhaps attempting flight a little too early.

I could hear mum overhead - she sounded distressed. It was a moment of privilege and sadness all rolled into one. Whilst I got to see up close what few people do, I felt sadness as I began to worry about how the owlet was going to survive. 

I frantically started to ring friends more knowledgeable than me to see if there was anything I could do. Phone on speaker, I was instructed to inspect the owlet to see if it was injured. Thankfully it wasn’t - wings intact, no obvious signs of pain and trying to bite me. I was assured that the owlet had a high chance of survival as mum would continue to feed it even though it wasn’t in the nest. My sadness turned to relief which then turned into belly laughs.

The owlet started off looking a little dazed but after inspecting it, it’s expression changed dramatically - there’s no other way to describe it - it was very obviously deeply pissed off! It had a look of utter humiliation on it’s sweet little face.

But that wasn’t what made me laugh out loud - it was a long forgotten childhood memory that came flooding back to me. It was no longer an owlet looking angry and humiliated at me, it was my sister glaring at my mum during our annual Christmas ‘pose for a photograph wearing that year’s knitted monstrosity that our Scottish gran had spent all year making for us’.

Long before smart phones and digital cameras, my poor mum used to have to take dozens of photos in the hope that she’d get one where my sister wasn’t looking so obviously unappreciative.