The owl shakes out her feathers after a morning bath.

I've done some homework and I found out my neighborhood owl is actually a barred owl. There's a family of them. I saw the fuzzy headed little baby tonight but couldn't get a picture of it. The parents keep it pretty high up in the tree. The mature owls are fond of taking morning baths in a puddle which forms in the middle of my street due to sprinkler systems. They are often surrounded by a variety of angry birds including sparrows, wrens, and blujays, who chatter and dive bomb them. They also like to lurk in a tree in our yard and wait for the neighbor's chihuahua to come out for his evening constitution. They have attacked it more than once. The other night we heard an odd yelping, then some vigorous hooting. We observed from the porch as my neighbor (who originally hails from Mississippi and retains the requisite accent) chased both owls back up the tree, yelling "You can't have mah dawg! He's too big for you anyway!" Who needs T.V. when you have this kind of drama?

Tonight. there's a full moon. Not a blue moon but full even so. I like when the moon is hanging low in the sky, like it's caught in the branches of the oak tree across the street, like it's staring in at me through the window.