Owls make superior neighbors. I used to live across the street from a big old owl who was a never ending source of amusement. For a while I owned part interest in a couple of houses on Blake St. in South Berkeley. It was a mixed block. I mean mixed in the Berkeley sense, ie. if it was carbon based, one of 'em lived there. We had a smattering of silicon, too. If you've never lived in Berkeley, you just don't understand all the various meanings that "neighbor" can have.

Next to the front house was this big old driveway that led to the back house. Right dead across the street was the big old pine tree. About three quarters of the way up this tree lived a big old owl. She was big, I mean really big, not condor or eagle big, but way big enough. Sometimes she looked like a Hail Mary pass coming right at you, deep in the end zone, only corpse pale and silent, but bigger than life.

Now this owl had a habitual behavior that stirred more than one ruckus over the years. You'd think a critter that flew would flap to get into motion. But no. Come twilight time this owl would crab walk to the end her branch and dive. She'd extend her wings and glide straight down our drive way, losing altitude but gaining speed. She described a graceful curve, the nadir of which was about five or six feet off the ground (depending on the weather) and about half way down our drive way, at which point she'd adjust her trailing edge a little and start to climb, still with nary a flap. About the time she cleared the back house roof ridge she'd give about two or three big old flaps and be off about her business. She did this several times a night, which I took to mean that whenever she caught something she came home to eat it. I don't know if all owls behave like this, but this owl did.

I should mention that, unlike hawks, owls have a sort of soft, downy fringe on their trailing edge. It enables them to fly utterly silent, Nature's original stealth plane. It's rough on the mice and the rabbits, but hey, what can you do.

Now to complete the setting I must fill you in on the rest of the local ecology. These two houses were the home of an incestuous clique composed of whores, drug dealers, heathens, one mechanic, one high school student, a garage band and the original snooty waiter, and whoever each of us happened to be sleeping with that week. Predictably, we got a good mix at parties. There they'd be punks, hippies, bikers, queers, whores, other whores, a few of their "regulars," along with various musicians, artists, poets, mechanics, engineers, computer geeks, plotters against the Empire, students, bums, eggheads, a pair of mad scientists and their enterauge, a wide vsariety of multiple substances abusers, fugitives, felons, film students, a neighbor or two, and occasionaly what appeared to be an alien doing (near as I can tell) some sort of anthropological research on the customs Earth people (why, I never asked), all drunk as lords and/or tripping their brains out. It was Berkeley, that's what goes on there. Nothing unusual, you understand, just Berkeley, day in the life.

Periodically one of them would step out into the driveway to make wee wee or catch a breath of fresh air or something, and while out there, look up to see this pale white Scary Monster from Hell, with wings the span of a tall man's arms, silent as Death, ten feet away and headed straight at their face.

A blood curdling scream would ensue. They'd run in the house hyperventilating like turbochargers, hands trembling, teeth chattering, eyes wide as saucers and say, "Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh!" (and so forth) and the in crowd would crack up, howling with laughter till our eyes ran and our ribs hurt.

I loved that owl and miss her dearly. Of all the many and varied places I've ever lived, she was the best damn neighbor I ever had. Not only did we never have mice, but she put on a show every night and sometimes she'd get our guests to perform with her as well. That's about as good as neighbors get, at least when they live in a tree.