I heard one of them last night, as I snuck around the house to turn off the backyard sprinkler.

A rasping skrawk coming from a dead tree up the block.

(It's amazing. Town decides to start metering our water use and making us pay for it, and all of a sudden lawns turn brown, or even die. And now the huge, half-century old cottonwoods are dying, too. Coincidence? I think not. Dumb people.)

Aaaanyway, I heard the skrawk.

So this evening, I wasn't that surprised to hear hoots added to the skrawks.

Two owls now. I taught the neighbor kids how to talk to owls, and the two of them were bouncing between yard and street, talking to the owls above.

Who seemed quite bored about the whole thing.

But wouldn't shut up, either, so maybe the kids were interesting to the birds. I don't know.

But folks were coming by to take pictures. And one gent and I visited directly below the birds for close to 30 minutes about fishing, and hunting lions.

His Jack Russell terrier works fine for hunting lions, by the way. Coyotes, too. Hates coyotes.

But won't hurt a coyote pup. Too much parental instinct, I guess.

And all this while, the owls were simply bored, scratching themselves

and hooting to at least two other owls in other parts of town as they waited for the night's hunt to begin.