Nurturing the Wounded Locals

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Cormac MacConnell - The West's Awake

Nurturing the Wounded Locals

March 19, 2008

By Cormac MacConnell

OUT the corner of my eye I saw a slow track of luminescence against the black of a bad night. Immediately afterwards a cushioned thump against the roof of the car. I knew what had happened because I have often traveled that new road into Shannon Town at night, often seen that luminous tracking across it.

For some reason there are more barn owls around Shannon Airport than anywhere else I have lived. I’d struck one or, more accurately, it had struck me.

It was raining and windy and wet. I thought for a couple of seconds, but then got out of the car and went to investigate.

The collision had been very slight, and maybe the poor bird was still alive. There was a motionless white body lying just by the boot.

I was only about three minutes from home so I opened the boot, placed the owl inside, continued home. On arrival I placed the motionless body in a cardboard box that had been in the boot and carried it inside by the stove.

The Dutch Nation was still not home from work, but the cats Tuppence and Thruppence and the two dogs were very interested indeed in the box.

I ejected all animals from the room. I looked at the beautiful bird.

There was no movement, but there was no blood. The surprisingly plump body was still warm, the great head sideways but not at a grotesque angle either.

I decided that maybe she was only stunned. I chose the gender totally from her somehow matronly presence.

I wrapped a small towel around her, left her beside the hot stove, fed the cats and dogs outside, had a hot whiskey myself. Outside it was indeed a bad and stormy night.

Inside 10 minutes there was movement of one leg. The talons opened and closed several times.

I decided that I would christen her Nora and that it would be best if she recovered her senses out in the dark rather than in a bright room.

I brought her outside to one of the sheds and, if I may say so myself, was inventive in the way I stabled her. Tuppence and Thruppence prowl by night, so I put her in a shed with a space through which a bird could fly away over the top of the door.

There was an old summer stool to hand and this, together with a small timber wine box of the type used to make plonk more saleable, I used to make a kind of invalid chair in which Nora was about half roosting and half propped up.

There were tiny talon movements at this point, but those gorgeous wisdom-brimming eyes were closed.

I did even better than that. Earlier in the evening I’d seen the tiny body of yet another field mouse killed by the cats lying forlornly under the sweetest of the two apple trees.

I found it with a torch and bore it back by the poor murdered tail to the feet of Nora. I also left a saucer of water before departing, closing the door behind me, and just making my armchair again before the Dutch Nation arrived home.

I then made another good decision. I decided against telling her of the incident altogether.

She has the softest of hearts in relation to animals. To inform her of the collision would have drawn down wrath on my head for actually striking Nora, and would also maybe have meant an emergency trip to a pet hospital.

Certainly the injured party would have been brought back in beside the stove and given infinitely more caring than the rude enough measures I had adopted. So I held my piece, speaking only about the cats’ further executions of mice and birds.

She is thinking of equipping them with silver bells to warn the birds. A lovely soft heart for certain, much softer than that of an Irish countryman.

Down in the pub later I mentioned my accident to several locals. The combined wisdom was that Nora had a good sporting chance of survival.

I was also told that the Shannon owls have collisions with cars surprisingly often because the new roads criss-cross their natural habitat.

And one wise man told me that if you see an owl in a twilight tree with her head on one side that she is hunting mice in the undergrowth underneath. “Her whole head, you see, is one big ear. She can actually hear the beating of the mouse’s heart down below in the leaves!”

How do people know things like that?

The next morning when the Dutch Nation went shopping I ventured out to the shed. It was still wild and wet but I went anyway.

Even before I opened the door I saw a couple of small feathers on the top of it. Upon entry the impromptu roosting box contained no Nora.

And furthermore, it contained no mouse either! I clearly have the healing touch.

We approach Easter widely associated with the Easter Rising in our history. I look upon the resurrection of Nora as a modern kind of rising, if ye know what I mean.

In the mind’s eye I see her sitting on the lower branch of a tree at twilight. She is listening for the beating of a mouse’s heart, and that is wonderful.

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