A Mobbing of Crows
Soren felt the blind snake shift in the deep feathers between his shoulders as he and the three other owls flew through the buffeting winds. They had been flying for hours now and it seemed as if in the last minutes the darkness had begun to dissolve drop by drop, and they were now passing from the full black of the night into the first light of the morning. Beneath them a river slid like a dark ribbon over the earth.
“Let’s keep flying even though it’s getting light,” said Twilight, the immense Great Grey Owl who flew downwind of Soren. “We’re getting nearer. I just feel it.”
It was to the Sea of Hoolemere they flew, and in the middle of that sea was an island and on that island there was a tree called the Great Ga’Hoole Tree and in this tree there was an order of owls. It was said that these owls would rise each night into the blackness and perform noble deeds. The universe of owls was desperately in need of such deeds. For with its many kingdoms it was about to be destroyed by a terrible evil.
Hidden away in a maze of stone canyons and ravines there was a violent nation of deadly owls known as St Aegolius. The evil of St Aggie’s, as it was often called, had touched almost every owl kingdom in some way or another. Soren and his best friend Gylfie, the tiny Elf Owl, had both been captured by St Aggie’s patrols when they were young nestlings unable to fly. Twilight too had been snatched but, unlike Soren and Gylfie, he had managed to escape before being imprisoned. Digger’s youngest brother had been eaten by a St Aggie’s patrol and his parents later killed. Soren and Gylfie had met Twilight and Digger, a Burrowing Owl, shortly after their own daring escape from the stone canyons of St Aggie’s.
Although the four owls had met as orphans, they had become so much more. In a desert still stained with the blood of two of the fiercest of St Aggie’s elite warrior owls, whom they had defeated, they had discovered a knowledge, along with a feeling deep in their gizzards, where all owls felt their strongest emotions. And this knowledge was that they were a band for evermore, one for all and all for one, bound by the deepest loyalty and dedicated to the survival of the kingdoms of all owls. They had sworn an oath in that desert drenched with blood and tinged with the silver light of the moon. They would go to Hoolemere. It was as a band that they knew they must go and find its great tree, which loomed now as the heart of wisdom and nobility in a world that was becoming insane and ignoble. They must warn of the evil that threatened. They must become part of this ancient kingdom of guardian knights on silent wings.
They hoped they were drawing near even though the river they now followed was not the River Hoole, the one that led to Hoolemere. Still, Twilight said he was sure that this river would lead to the Hoole and on to Hoolemere, and the very thought of this legendary island in the sea made the four owls stroke even harder against the confusing winds. But Soren felt Mrs Plithiver stir again in his feathers. Mrs P, as he called her, had been the old nest-maid in the hollow where Soren’s parents had made their home. These blind snakes had been born without eyes, and where their eyes should have been there were only two slight indentations. The rosy-scaled reptiles were kept by many owls to tend the nests and make sure they were clean and free of maggots and various vermin that found their way into the hollows. Soren had thought that he would never see Mrs P again, and yet they had found each other just days after his escape from St Aggie’s. She had told him what Soren had long suspected – that it was his older brother, Kludd, who had pushed him from the nest when his parents were out hunting. Although he had survived the fall, still being flightless he was prey to any ground animal. Ground animal! Who would have ever thought another owl would be the greatest danger? Until that moment when he was snatched and felt himself being carried into the night sky by a pair of talons, Soren had thought that the worst predator in the forest, from an owl’s point of view, was a raccoon. And then Mrs P told him that she suspected Kludd had done the same thing to Eglantine, his baby sister. When Mrs P had protested, Kludd had threatened to eat her. So the poor old snake had no choice but to leave – very quickly.
Now Mrs P slithered towards Soren’s left ear, the higher ear and the easiest for her to reach. “Soren,” she whispered, “I’m not sure if it is a good idea to keep flying with all this light. We don’t want to get mobbed.”
“Mobbed?” Soren asked.
“You know, crows.”
Soren felt a chill run through his gizzard.
Perhaps if Mrs Plithiver had not been whispering her warning in his ear he might have heard the chuffing sound of wings, and not owl wings, overhead.
“Crow to windward!” Gylfie cried. And then suddenly the rosy dawn sky turned black.
“We’re being mobbed!” shrieked Twilight.
Oh Glaux! thought Soren. This was the worst thing that could befall any owl flying in the daytime. But it was still very early. Crows at night were fine. Owls were crows’ worst enemies at night. They could attack them as they slept, but crows during the day were something else. Crows in daylight were terrible. If a crow discovered an owl during the daytime, even if it was just one crow, that bird had a way of signalling others and soon an entire flock would arrive and mob the owls, diving at their heads with their sharp beaks, trying to tear out their eyes.
“Scatter!” Gylfie cried out.
“Scatter and loop.” Suddenly, Gylfie seemed to be everywhere at once. She was like a crazed insect, zipping through the air. Soren, Digger and Twilight began to follow her lead. Soren quickly noticed that Gylfie would swoop up from her loops and spiralling dives to just beneath the crows, stabbing them on the underside of their wings. This made the crows drop their wings down close to their bodies and lose altitude.
“I feel one coming up behind,” hissed Mrs P. “Off your windward tail feathers.”
Mrs P carefully began to crawl backwards on Soren. He adjusted his wings. For even with her light weight, as she moved he could feel his balance shift. Mrs P could smell the crow’s stinky breath as it closed in. Soren began to dive. Mrs P continued to make her way towards the stiffer and coarser tail feathers. A great whiff of crow stench engulfed her. Mrs Plithiver raised her head in the direction of the foul odour and began screaming, “Scum of the sky, curse of the earth, riffraff of the Yonder. Scurrilous crowilous,” she ranted.
The Yonder was what all blind snakes called the sky because it was so far away, about as far away as anything could be for a snake. But Mrs P saved her most poisonous insult for last – “Wet pooper!” Blind snakes were especially impressed by owls’ digestive systems, which allowed them to compress certain parts of waste into neat pellets that they yarped up through their mouths, as opposed to other disgusting birds whom they referred to as ‘wet poopers’. The crow seemed to brake mid-flight. His beak fell open, his wings folded.
Crows are simple birds. And what this crow had just seen and heard – a snake hissing curses and rising from the back feathers of an owl – stunned him. He went ‘yeep’, which meant that he simply froze in flight and began to plummet to earth.
The crows by this time had begun to disappear. Twilight flew up to Soren’s windward side. “Digger’s hurt,” he said.
Indeed, when Soren looked in the direction of Digger, he saw the Burrowing Owl tipping dangerously to one side. “We’ve got to find a place to land.”
Gylfie flew up breathlessly. “I don’t know how much longer Digger can last. He’s not flying straight at all.”
“Which way is he tipping?” Mrs P asked.
“Downwind,” said Twilight.
“Quick!”
