Thursday, March 29, 2018

The Hidden Lives of Owls, and my little cameo

beautiful cover design
I recently purchased the Kindle version of a book about owls. I read a few reviews, but more than that—I loved the cover!

In the book The Hidden Lives of Owls: The Science and Spirit of Nature's Most Elusive Birds, author Leigh Calvez writes about owl habitat, owl calls and their social behavior. She also explores the human-connection—in particular, owl obsession and mythology.

As I read the introduction, the opening ideas seemed similar to my owl book. She addressed something I find fascinating—the relationship between the owl and the shaman. Then I saw this line:
In many Native American tribes, the powerful owl is for the tribe’s shaman only. Some people even believe there’s a connection between owls and extraterrestrials. Writer and artist Mike Clelland, who writes about owls and mythology, believes that there is a synchronistic link between owls and UFO sightings. What is it about owls that makes them so mysterious and fascinating to us?
I had a cameo in someone else’s owl book! It wasn’t much, but I was struck how straight she wrote about my somewhat peculiar owl obsession. I realize I'm an easy target for ridicule, but I sense no smirking on the part of the author (whew!).

My brief mention was sandwiched in between two ideas at the core of my own research. The line before was about the owl and shaman, and the line after my was essentially the same question I have asked over and over: Why owls?
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2 comments:

Brizdaz (Darren) said...

I saw a news story the other day titled 'Bobby the barn owl causes chaos at wedding' about an owl that scared the crap out of one of the wedding party who allegedly has a fear of birds.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/owl-goes-rogue-in-wedding-stunt-5tsn0qjzq

This guy seemed to be the architect of his own/owl downfall (pardon the deliberate pun) as he pointed at the owl and the owl must have thought the guy was making a landing spot for the owl.
I had been watching the movie 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me' that day and noticed the owl in the news story was named Bobby and that the evil entity associated with owls in the 'Twin Peaks'show is named BOB, so I wrote a tongue-in-cheek post called 'The Owls Aren't What They Seem: A Message From BOB Perhaps?' about the links between BOB, wedding rings/secret lodge rings, owls, David Bowie(AKA David Jones) and the guy who was attacked at the wedding, who was named Con Jones.
The link to the post is here if your readers are interested -

https://brizdazz.blogspot.com.au/2018/03/the-owls-arent-what-they-seem-message.html

The message in this post seems to be as Bowie sings "never gonna fall for modern love..." :-)

Chris said...

THIS IS SO AWESOME, MIKE!