On the mailbox!

The owl count on my drive home is ever increasing...twelve yesterday! I haven't had this much fun commuting since the fall migration, when I see sandhill cranes and tundra swans. It makes my day whenever I see a bald eagle as well, and I have been seeing them all winter around here, but this owl irruption is simply amazing. My husband called me at work to tell me there was a great gray owl hanging around the front of our property along the road. He took pictures until he ran out of film, but he missed the ultimate picture. As I approached our driveway, I saw the owl swoop across the road from the neighbor's fence, and it landed on our mailbox! I slowly turned into the driveway, so the owl was about ten feet away from my side window. I stopped and looked, and the owl just gazed at me. There's something about the look on a great gray owl's face; there's the common myth of the "wise owl", and I can see where that came from. There is a sense of wisdom and serenity. And I cannot fail to see the irony in that a wild creature, one that flew hundreds of miles from its native range, one that makes its home in spruce bogs and conifer forests far from human civilization, now sits on my mailbox and just stares as I drive past.