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What Do You Have In Common With A Barn Owl - Raise The Roof!

By: Laurie J. Brenner

I want to share with you a true story. This is the story of Ooodee the Owl.

In 1985 my daughters and I lived in a town called Mariposa, California, just south of Yosemite National Park. We moved onto 13 acres of raw Sierra Nevada land, without running water or electricity. For the first three years we lived in a Columbia, a 30-foot travel trailer built in the late 70's. My girls were stacked into the hallway on bunks I had made out of two by fours.

Electricity came two years after our move there and water six years later. Yes, in the middle of America, we lived a dichotomy - a paradoxical life – if you will.

A friend ran into some people in the central valley that uncovered a barn owl’s nest in their attic and unfortunately the mother never came back. We obtained one of these small birds.

When I first saw Ooodee – his head balding from the loss of his down, he reminded me of a half-blown dandelion. His temporary home was a box on our small kitchen table and every time you walked by he would lie back on his elbows, claws out and hiss at you like a dragon.

We fed him raw meat but learned quickly that he needed huge doses of calcium or the complete carcass of a mouse or a bird. An owl, being a predator, and like all birds (and snakes), swallows its food whole. A few days after having eaten the carcass and after full digestion he will regurgitate up a round ball. All of the things not consumable by the bird are there, talons, beaks, whatever. It's just under the size of a golf ball and actually very clean and somewhat dry.

This is the way a bird gets its calcium, without which would cause his wings to break during flight.

As Ooodee grew he became a loving member of the family. He would flutter inside our little trailer and live at the bottom of the wood stove in a cubby hole. This little place never got too hot or cold and served as his home, much like a hole in a tree. When it came time for him to fly, he would fly to and fro within the trailer. Because of his acute hearing and radar like capabilities, he always managed to keep within a foot of the ceiling.

I remember thinking that as I watched Ooodee perched on my daughter's finger that he was a glorious animal indeed. Each ear was placed off-angle to the other and white downy-soft feathers formed a dish around his face, acting like a receiver for the sound. As I looked at him I realized why Native Americans wore headdresses.

I remember the first time we took him outdoors, realizing that we needed to train him for flying outside and for eventual release. He flew at our height level and landed in some Manzanita bushes crying shisssssst shisssst (which is a noise they make). He cried for our help in removing him. He got stuck on all the sticky berries.

At first, I never realized why he only flew at about 5 feet off the ground, he was a bird – he knows how to fly.

Then I realized. Ooodee is like us. Like us he lived in a "box." That box had a ceiling that was no higher than 6 feet at the most.

Like us he became conditioned by his experience. He began to believe that when he flew, there was a ceiling and like us he was a limited being.

I remember the day he first discovered there was no ceiling. His cries of utter joy as he circled higher and higher and higher will stay with me the rest of the days of my life.

I don’t know how high he flew; I only heard the joy in his cry as he got further and further away.

I don't know where Ooodee is now, but I've heard stories of him from time to time and I can't help but think how much like us he really is.

We too are raised in boxes of our own making. Our core belief structures formed in childhood from whatever traumas and circumstances we experienced served us then but serve us no longer.

Are you one of those people who fly 5 feet off the ground because you’re sure the ceiling is still there?

Do something about your limitations. It's time to master yourself.

Wishing them away won't work.

©2007 by Laurie Brenner All Rights Reserved

Publishing guidelines: You are more than welcome to publish any of my articles as long as you include my byline and provide a link back to one of my websites.

Article Source: http://www.newagelivingarticles.com

Laurie Brenner, former managing editor of California's oldest continuously published weekly, now writes for the sheer *joy* of it, her ezine, The View From The Western Slope and for New Age Living Articles to share with you tools and insights for living in this new "quantum age."

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