Since they only gave us one Buffy tonight, I suggested to the wife that we hoof it on over and check on the owls. A suggestion that she cheerfully accepted. Sisters were not too sure if they wanted to go... eldest son was in the kitchen prepping their dinners.

What a horrible choice for a heeler:

eat...

or go outside?

They opted for outside.

The owlets were both perched up on the railing again, patiently waiting for a parent to come by with something dead to eat. We settled down on the bear-cat fountain to wait, and visit.

She hadn't heard most of my owl tales yet. Certainly not the spotlighting one.

Cop car made a pass on the south side of the plaza.

A few minutes later it came back and parked (in the traffic lane, of course) between us and the owls.

"You keeping an eye on my owls?"

His owls, you notice. This is the cop who hauled me to the school to identify the egret. Been watching his owls for weeks, ever since he saw the mother snatch a baby cottontail from the park and deliver it to the nest.

Yes, it is that small of a town... the cops usually do not have anything better to do than sit in the park and watch owls hunt.

Like everyone else in town, he is concerned what will happen to his baby owls when they leave the nest.

I suggest he just give me a call.

This elicits a brief pause in his dialogue (I suspect the night shift is always looking for somebody to talk to), as he ponders why in the world he would want to call this guy.

Yep, like so many others, without the uniform on, he has no idea who I am. That's okay, happens with lots of folks. Can be an advantage sometimes.

Eventually his curiosity gets to him, and he just blurts out the question "What's your job?" Then he figures out who I am. And the questions come fast and steady. About owls and egrets. The Academy. The little buck deer in town. Our third heeler. The little yellow and green birds that were in his yard last year.

Wife volunteers that if they had black on them, it might be the goldfinches that flocked through our yard a couple weeks ago, eating dandelion seeds. Noooo, couldn't be them. These were in his yard a year ago.

Figure that logic out for me, will you please?

All this time, the owlets are peacefully watching us (or, more likely, the heelers, one of which is sitting nicely on the fountain with us, and one is not). In the time we visited with this cop, two separate cars came by, circled the median and then slowed to look at the owls.

The second actually stopped for a minute or two. Double parked besides the illegally parked cop car. Felt like we were in Yellowstone with a grizzly bear by the road.

Well, no, a grizzly by the road in Yellowstone is a major circus. This is more like Yellowstone with a bison by the road (there are plenty of bison by the road).

I love this town.

After about a half hour of parking in the street, the cop finally decided to resume his patrol. He was soon followed by Dan, wearing bright yellow, pedaling his bicycle for his evening exercise.

He never looked up at the owls. Or at us, for that matter. Eyes down on the asphalt.

But he got the owls' attention. Both heads swiveled in perfect unison as the yellow streak went by, the larger owl eventually leaning forward to peek around its sibling to keep its eyes on the strange apparition just a little longer.

"Can we eat that?"

Oh, when we were getting ready to leave, after circling through the park to let the heelers harass and drag us after rabbits? The larger owlet was standing tall, flapping its wings, exercising the muscles it didn't even know it had. Won't be long, now.