David's Blague

The kids asked me, after a few more stories about Ralph, whether we had any other animals on the farm. "Of course we did," I told them. After all, there were skunks and porcupines, and a fat cat in the stories I told you. And that's just a start.

But if I had to pick the most interesting critter who lived with us on Spring Creek Farm, I'd have to say it was Fuzzball. "What kind of an animal was Fuzzball?" my older one asked.

Funny thing about that is, we didn't know at first. This is the story I told them.


The day your grandpa came home with Fuzzball, he called over your Uncle Dan and Uncle Doug and me to see what he had in his hard hat. It was a tiny little grey ball of fuzz, which is where he eventually got his name. I thought it might be a mouse or a squirrel, but Dad had already looked closer and seen that Fuzzball had only two feet, and that he also had wings, and a little tiny beak.

He was an owl that one of Dad's logging buddies had knocked out of a tree. For some reason, this guy brought the owl to Dad, whom I suspect was known as a bit of soft touch among Doubravsky's fallers. Dad brought the owl home, and we all wondered what it would grow into.

Between the Fort Vancouver Regional Library and this other buddy of my dad's who inexplicably knew a thing or two about owls, we figured out pretty quickly that Fuzzball liked eating bugs. Especially grasshoppers with first both, then one, then none of the jumping legs pulled off. Grasshoppers were in abundant supply that summer. I don't think it was much more than a month before Fuzzball was flying around on his own.

He turned into a beautiful Flammulated Owl, not more than six inches tall full grown. As one would expect, he could do owlish things, like if he was sitting on your finger and you turned your hand, he could make his head go all the way around. You might think Fuzzball isn't a very dignified name for an owl, but it's better than that Ron Weasley character who named his owl Pigwidgeon, and besides, we didn't really know he was an owl at first.

Anyway, before we knew it, it was time to let Fuzzball go. One night, he flew away, and that was that. It was sad and happy at the same time. Sad because he was gone, but happy because he got to go do owlish things, and hopefully to find an owl friend or two. We didn't have any idea where he went.



I don't remember how much later it was, but it wasn't too long, when one day Larry Littleton was standing under an apple trees in our yard. Fuzzball came flying out of the tree and landed on his shoulder. Larry was always keen on Fuzzball, and Fuzzball on Larry, and he might have been the one who found Fuzzball in the first place, but my memory is murky in that regard.

From that point forward, Fuzzball would fly off at night, and come back to the house during the day to sleep in his little owl cage, which wasn't to keep him in, but to keep any of the other farm critters from bothering him.

And that was how we came to have an owl in residence at Spring Creek Farm.