Metuchen Edison History Features

Recollections of

Boyhood Days

In Old Metuchen

By

David Trumbull Marshall

Published by The Case Publishing Co., Flushing NY 1930

(Second Edition)- (c) 1930

 

Barred Owls.

Owls are supposed to be very wise.

They look wise but that is about as far as it goes.

I once knew of a barred owl's nest which had been robbed of eggs or young ones for thirteen years in succession. The owls did not cease to build in that nest until the tree blew down.

The barred owl is about as large as a domestic hen and very much the color of a Plymouth Rock hen, being mottled gray all over. Their eyes are large and very dark blue like a cow's.

In Bloomfield's woods at Metuchen there was a dead maple tree about three feet in diameter.

About twenty feet up where the tree was two feet in diameter the trunk was broken square off. In the top of this break there was a hollow place about two feet deep, in all having a capacity of about a bushel.

My brother Will, who was a scientific collector of bird's eggs, had taken eggs from that nest for years. One summer I went there and brought home two young owls, each as large as a pigeon and each covered with down like a young chicken. I kept them for a long time in a flour barrel.

When they got big enough to fly I put them under our front piazza, which was the full length of our large house.

The owls were dubbed Pete and Martha, though which was which no one could tell. These birds were fed on butcher's meat for some months when we got tired of them and let them go. Did they fly away? They did not. They roosted all summer in one of our evergreens and came as regularly as the chickens to be fed. We finally got tired of them and killed them and took them to a taxidermist in New York to have them stuffed and mounted.

They were well stuffed and mounted but the ignorant taxidermist fitted them with yellow eyes instead of the deep blue eyes which they had originally. We never looked at those stuffed owls without a feeling of resentment against the fool taxidermist who had so spoiled their looks.

I don't suppose that the owls cared a rap what colored eyes they had, even if they knew at all.

I got pairs of young owls from that tree once or twice after that. Finally the tree blew down.

I suppose owls are endowed with sufficient intelligence to maintain them in the environment in which they belong. From my point of view they seem one of the stupidest creatures ever.

I once had a gray barn owl. They are most beautiful creatures. Some one told me that if I would set the owl on a post by walking round and round him I could cause him to wring his own neck.

I couldn't. He would turn his head as far as it would go and then as quick as lightning would turn it back and begin turning again.

An owl has cylinders composed of plates of bone which enclose his eyes as a napkin ring encloses a napkin.

When he wishes to change the focus of his eyes he squeezes this ring together and increases the convexity of his eyes and thus shortens the focus.

 

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Lasted updated 6/8/99 by Jim Halpin.