The Last Word On Nothing

Dueting with animals will always be thrilling for me, and I’ll always envision our melodic conversations filling a sound gap somewhere up there. Enjoy this memory along with me!

I had a conversation with an owl the other night. It was a barred owl, a pretty common species in the woods around our cabin in central Virginia. The bird got going early—well before dusk—and I happened to be outside with my native wooden flute (purchased from this lovely flutemaker in Canada), so I found similar notes and replied in the same pattern. There was a pause while cicadas and crickets took a turn. Then, the owl again. Four quick hoots, repeated twice, the final one dropping off into a guttural drag. I waited a few beats, lets the insects hum some more, then played again, the eight notes. Seconds passed. Then, the owl.

Barred owls aren’t just one-note birds: They have a variety of calls, more than a dozen by some counts, including one that you’d swear came from a monkey. But this was the one people like to say sounds like “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?” (I’m not sold on that comparison, but it endures.)

It’s very possible, likely, even, that my flute playing had nothing to do with the owl’s decision to keep hooting. In my experience these owls will repeat the sequence at least a few times over a couple of minutes, regardless of any back talk. But I like to think we were conversing. There’s something magical about hearing a wild animal respond to you the way he would to his own kind, as if what you said was meaningful enough in his language to warrant a reply.

If barred owls weren’t so vocal, I wouldn’t know for sure they were around. Only once did I spy one, barely, as I pointed my flashlight beam into the big oak where a call seemed to be coming from. It was fully dark, but I glimpsed the bird’s eyeshine before he swooped toward me and then away, over my head. (A little anatomy: An owl’s eyes are super reflective, having an extra layer called the tapetum lucidum that snags light passing through the retina and bounces it back to what are already very sensitive rods.) The swoop was almost silent; I felt it more than heard it. Which is the owl’s way: The structure and texture of the wing feathers lets them funnel air very quietly by breaking up the turbulence that would otherwise whoosh.

But it was the calls moving through the air more than the bird’s anatomy that interested me that night. I thought about how the animal’s vocalizations in a sense fill a niche much as the physical animal does. It’s a more temporary residency, but still. I had the same notion some months before while lying in my tent in a rainforest in Borneo. I was listening, on my first night there, to the delightfully unfamiliar calls of wild things coming awake just before dawn. As cricket chirps were topped by a bird’s song that gave way to monkey chatter, I envisioned the soundscape in 3D with each unique noise—with its own pitch and volume and frequency—rushing in to inhabit an empty spot, standing tall to make itself known—ta da!–and then vacating just as quickly. Picture Tom Cruise in Minority Report flinging bits of data around in space with his finger…sliding this bit over, that one up, another one off screen, a new one in to replace it. That’s sort of how I saw it.

So, I think of animals as competing not just for a physical niche but for an aural one as well—a slot in the soundspace not yet taken that they can fill with chatter and alarms and music and be heard despite the din. It’s another way to make oneself known in a crowd. The variety makes it all possible: An elephant sending low-frequency rumbles through the Earth reaches her intended even as lions roar and cicadas scream. Like a lioness intent on spotting the weakest gazelle in the herd, an animal can hear a familiar voice and a known language rising above all others.

I don’t know that this is a terribly profound notion, but conversing with the owl, I realized that my flute toots were taking up one tiny pocket of aural space, filling that sound niche just for a moment, then flitting offscreen, leaving that spot vacant for the owl’s reply. Profound or no, it was kind of a neat way to think about it.

–Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

And here we are enduring another wet blast of late summer’s hot breath, a last gasp before fall blows in. This imminent transition of seasons is always a thoughtful time for me, for many of us. Here’s how I was thinking about it a few years ago.

Squirrels are comforted by birds’ easy chit-chat, new research tells us. Biologists already knew the scurrying rodents tuned into birds’ alarm calls, but they didn’t realize that the mammals responded to songs about the good times, too. Content chirps suggest to squirrels that all is well. 

To me, too.

At this time of year especially I find that sounds tell a comforting story. Here at the edge of the woods, at my Virginia cabin, late summer stretches and layers the crickets’ songs and deepens the quiet. The breezes are still-warm, breathy farewells to August. Birds, less riotous at the feeder, are choosier with their calls but certainly not silent: While no longer desperate to mate, those that don’t migrate still have territory to claim.

Today a few singular voices are cutting through the crickets’ hum–though I’ll admit I confuse the bluejay’s and the red-shouldered hawk’s caws unless I hear them side by side. Somebody’s crisp piercing note rises above another’s cascading dribble. I don’t know who’s who; clearly, I need to work on my bird IDs. But September’s in progress, these voices tell me: Revel in this transitional world.

The ways smells tap into memory, the sounds of home, I find, go deep and loosen knots. 

We have one of those percolating coffee pots–this one handed down two generations now–that truly sputters, moans, and sighs. There is no better, kinder alarm. And the ceiling fan wobbles just a tad, calling attention to itself, promising with its slight rattle that warm days are still to come. (I like to say that winter is still just a whisper in another room.) 

At night, I am early to bed, he stays up late. I lie awake waiting for the whoosh through the pipes, the shower spray’s uneven battering of the tub floor as steam encircles tired shoulders. Then, the squeaky turning of knobs, the water’s silence, the rubbing of towel on skin. And soon, a distinct clack–the front-door lock engaging, thank goodness he remembered–then two snaps: bathroom goes dark, hallway goes dark. Ease. Another day has closed. Tomorrow might be grayer, cooler, the light at a new angle. That’s okay.

And the finale: The dog paws at the blankets at my feet, claws raking against fabric; he circles once, twice, then flops down, waits a beat, and exhales fully. That sigh settles my heartbeat every time.

Fall, of course, will bring its own music—the zip of jackets, the crunch of leaves underfoot, the crackle of fire. These are cliches, perhaps, but powerful just the same.

But this anteroom to fall–as birds settle down (to squirrels’ relief) and the first crumpled leaves meet now-brittle grass (you can hear them land if you really listen)–has its own subtle sounds, those of a dog-tired season beginning to let go.

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Birds by Annatsach –  (Wikimedia commons)

Tree by Charles Patrick Ewing (Wikimedia commons)