Amir told me that a plastic owl, if moved around the yard twice a day, would keep hawks from carrying off the chickens. The owl doesn’t get moved twice a day. He gets moved more like once every three days, partly because I forget and partly because there aren’t but so many stable places for him to sit while not being obscured by trees.
Once, I put him on the edge of a planter that I bought to keep the chickens from getting into the upper part of our yard, which the kids have started calling the upper loft which sounds both uppity and like we are the chickens. (It only encouraged them to find another way up but my friend @Bloom Bloom Design is on the case.) When I went looking for the owl four days later, Aubrey pulled him out of the planter.
I noticed that the owl was on his stomach on the center of the grill this afternoon when I was sitting on the balcony over the backyard. I’d just left the backyard on account of my Bamboo Hour* being interrupted by quick, loud children. I knew if I didn’t go back down, the owl could lie there for days. If it’s advisable to move the owl twice a day, I can’t imagine it would take the hawks long to deduce that the owl was no longer a threat.
Just as I was preparing to go down and move the owl, the children rushed back into the backyard. They disappeared into the small section of yard that they call The Art Gallery and I call My Future Outdoor Shower Space. I managed to creep past them, upright the owl, and relocate him a few feet away.
That’s a thing that happened today.
*Bamboo Hour = office hours for receiving creative inspiration aka “being the bamboo”
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