By Jeremy Varner
Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?
A mature barred owl looms above Woodson Street in Grant Park.
Well, I wanted to know, so at four AM a couple of weeks ago I crawled out of my warm bed, put on a jacket, and went outside to peer up into the trees. A few minutes prior, I had awakened due to hearing what I can only describe as “squallerin’.” I tend to be a heavy sleeper, but the noise was in the boxelder limbs right outside our bedroom window, so it woke me up. My wife, who sleeps more lightly than I do, was already up. “Are they mating?” I asked. She said it sounded like it.
The call of the most common barred owl (Strix varia) is generally transcribed as Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all? But to get the tone right you have to add a little quaver and a whole lot of deep guttural noise. And when a couple of owls really heat up, the sounds become even more lewdly guttural, much louder, and a bit faster.
To satisfy my curiosity, and not because I’m a creep, I went outside into the cold winter night to see what those owls were up to. About the same time a third owl showed up in a cluster of trees a couple of houses away. He started the Who cooks for you? One of the original pair swooped over to a poplar tree, which provided a better view of this newcomer. After a few minutes the second original owl joined the first. So then it was two owls— a couple—in the poplar tree, and a third owl a few gardens away. The third owl would hoot, and the couple would hoot back and look in his direction.
Best I can tell, the original couple was engaging in some family planning. A third owl heard their ruckus and thought maybe he’d like to join the fun. I’ve read that barred owls are monogamous and mate for life, so the third owl was likely breaking all sorts of owl cultural rules and engaging in risky behavior. But hey, they can’t say yes if you don’t ask.
Put another way: During an intimate moment some stranger showed up on the front lawn and asked to join. The husband went out to the front porch (poplar tree) to yell back that the interloper should mind his own business. The two men holler back and forth a few times. Eventually the wife leaves the house (boxelder) to join her mate on the front porch. Now the stranger is arguing with a couple who have each other’s backs and are fighting from home territory. The stranger eventually recognizes the wisest move is to move on.
Interrupted sleep, cold nights, energetic owl calls, and a little imagination help you cook up stories that’ll compete with the best daytime TV.
