Wednesday It Was 2 Owls, Yesterday It Was A Mermaid

Although Paulette and I were tempted to return to the trail on Cobble Hill Mountain to see if the 2 Barred Owls we saw on Wednesday might still be hanging around, it was too nice a day to be heading into the thick, dark rainforest. Instead, we opted for the sunny trail that goes around the Cobble Hill Lake Quarry. It’s one of our favourites and yesterday I got another surprise. This time, it wasn’t Owls – it was a Mermaid!

Paulette was walking ahead of me with Rylie and as she rounded a corner I heard her say “hello, isn’t it a beautiful day?” to someone and a girl responded “yes, it is”. As I turned the corner I saw it was a young girl who looked to be in her early 20’s and she was completely topless as she sat in the sun on a large rock by the shore of the quarry. She looked at me without moving and completely unfazed said “hi”. I, of course, said “hi” right back and kept my camera right by my side!

I caught up with Paulette and said to her “did you see that girl back there, she was topless?”  Paulette said “no, I just looked at her face, she was quite beautiful”. I immediately replied “well, I saw her face too, but she was topless”. For a second, I thought I was imagining things but we were about 50 ft. away by then and we turned around and the young girl was standing up and just about to pull a t-shirt on over her head. No doubt about it – I was right!

The rest of our hike and our day was pretty routine. When we got back home, Rylie and I headed up to the TV room which is nice and cool and settled into the LazyBoy recliner for a short afternoon siesta.

Judy, the Bird Lady of Blogland, correctly identified the Owls we saw on Wednesday afternoon while hiking on Cobble Hill Mountain as Barred Owls.

As with most birds, I’d never heard of Barred Owls before. I’ve heard of Barn Owls and thought for a minute maybe that’s what Judy was referring to.

But, knowing that Judy knows all about birds I went off to my source of all-knowing information – Maharishi Google and he’s what he had to say about Barred Owls:

The barred owl (Strix varia) is a large typical owl native to North America. Best known as the hoot owl for its distinctive call, it goes by many other names, including eight hooter, rain owl, wood owl, and striped owl. I sure hope we get to see these owls again on one of our walks as they sure are impressive looking.

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