On the wild side

The necessity of keeping highly-civilized company in my daily routine allows for heightened pleasure when a 9:00pm walk around the block with the dog turns into a wildlife encounter in this neighborhood. Due to the majority of senior neighbors, it's pretty still around here at that hour. The hint is taken by various bestial beings, and they stalk, glide and slither at will, to be discovered by lonesome humans unwilling to surrender the shadows to these creatures. Tonight, with two dogs at my side, I happened on a swiftly darting fox (could have been a cat) about one driveway ahead of us in the street. Regardless of what they perceived the little nocturnal streak to be, both hounds bayed vigorously, pulling me to the place where the darkling thing melted into the landscape of oak trees and moonless azaleas.

At the turn of the block, minutes later, from a shadowed yard between street lights, a seemingly huge owl, his span enhanced by the element of surprise, rose from beneath the trees to a hidden perch among the branches. As I squinted to make out his profile against the limbs outlined in the soft streetlight, he glided silently from the tree above us to another, darker gallows -- a good move on his part, as I never made out his form again, though I peered for a few moments as the dogs fidgeted and rattled their leash chains. The wonder of such a large animal moving above me in complete silence gave a sense of not belonging in this intimate setting -- I an awkward intruder in unnatural surroundings.