Summer of the Spotted Owl (4 page)

“What is this, the Itchy Stomp?” I demanded. “Just answer my question. Why would you want a —”

It was no use. Itchy leaped like a jackrabbit over the grass and zoomed off down the sidewalk.

“Come back here, you wiener!” I bellowed, running after him. But he was already at the end of the block and round a weeping willow.

“Mega-wiener!” Admittedly, yelling insults wasn't very productive. It was just the only option I could think of.

Hands closed around my shoulders. “They have noise bylaws in this neighborhood, Dinah,” said Jack.

Rowena cooed over
the four mewing kittens Jack and I lifted from the cardboard box. One of them reached out a curious paw to bat a flowing strand of her gray hair. “Aren't you darling,” Rowena sighed, stroking the kittens. “Now don't you get jealous, Napoleon,” she added to the marmalade cat, who'd appeared round the corner of the house.

Napoleon couldn't be bothered with jealousy. He was too busy twining himself round Jack's legs and purring.

“Forget it, buddy,” Jack told him. “When Madge and I get our own place, the first thing I'm going to do is head to the pound and choose a whopping big German shepherd. Enough with the fluffy, feminine pets already.”

He picked Napoleon up and glared into a pair of unfazed green eyes. “I want a guy type of animal. A man's companion.”

Napoleon uttered his loudest purr yet.

A white car with the
North Vancouver Bugle
on the side, as well as a drawing of a red bugle, pulled up to the curb. Sylvester Sloan unbent his lanky frame from the driver's seat and sprinted up to us, Adam's apple bobbing.

“Hey, Rowena!” he exclaimed, flapping his steno pad at us. “I hear you got more cats!”

Another incredibly timely tip-off, I thought. Itchy shows up and the
Bugle
is close behind on his skinny heels.

“Who leaves these tips for you, Sylvester?” I demanded.

“Like I'd know, kid. The number's nine-eight-B-U-G-L-E if you got a tip yourself. One of these days I'm gonna make it big. I'll be the next Woodward and Bernstein, I will.”

“Who?” I said.

“What're you, a spotted owl?” Sylvester jeered. “Woodward and Bernstein—great investigative reporters. Went after crooked politicians. That's what my career needs, y'know? A nice, juicy, crooked politician.”

Sylvester squinted through his untidy bangs at Rowena. “So. What did you get this time, the usual run-of-the-mill domestic shorthairs?” He scribbled on his pad.

From the other side of the hedge I heard Madge exclaim, “Pantelli! What happened to your eye?”

“Dinah bashed me.”

No one could accuse Pantelli of being overly discreet.

“What!? You were barely here five minutes and you sustained an injury? That's a new record for my little — or should I say,
lethal
— sister.”

Madge's voice grew firm. “Come inside and I'll make you some tea, Pantelli.” In my family, a cup of tea was regarded as the cure for everything.

Sylvester finished scrawling notes about the newest feline additions to the house of Pickles. “The mad cat lady of Marisa Drive,” he said with satisfaction. “Thanks for the latest story, Rowena!”

I stuck an ankle out to prevent Sylvester from leaving just yet. “If you wanted to be like this Woodstein or whoever, you'd look for someone with an itch,” I informed him.

“Skin conditions don't make headlines,” Sylvester sniffed.

Beyond the hedge, Pantelli was protesting, “But Madge, I don't
like
tea…”

Above us a bright red hang glider, resembling a wide, lipsticky grin, floated gently over the rooftops. This glider rider, at least, would land on the playing field rather than the Urstads' swimming pool.

For once my gaze didn't follow the hang glider. Instead I looked up, up to Grouse Mountain.

If I wanted to find out about Itchy, I'd have to go up Grouse. As our priest at St. Cecilia's, Father O'Reilly, liked to quote, “I look up to the hills, from whence cometh my help.”

Someone up on that extra big hill, Grouse Mountain, would be able to help me. Someone up there would remember an inept, constantly scratching glider rider.

Chapter Four
A Spotted Visitor,
and then a Bald One

H
orrified by his shiner, Pantelli's aunt refused to let him off her property for the next few days. She intended to keep him “out of danger's way,” she explained frostily to me over the phone.

“For ‘danger,' read ‘Dinah,' ” was Jack's amused take on this.

“It's not funny, Jack,” Madge told him. “One side of Pantelli's face resembles a blueberry waffle. Dinah is supposed to be maturing into a young woman, not the Tasmanian devil.”

As a result, I spent the next afternoon floating quietly on the inflatable mattress I'd found in the Urstads' garage. I was feeling too subdued to yell “Bombs away!” at hang gliders. Maybe Madge had a point. I mean, I enjoy being loud and enthusiastic, but inflicting bodily injuries on friends was a little over the top.

I decided to practice being ultra-quiet and still, like a statue. I dozed off.

Which was why, on hearing “Who cooks you?” I assumed it was part of a dream. “Who cooks you?” There it was again. Only in dreams did people say odd things like that for no reason.

“Who cooks you?”

I opened my eyes. Ahead of me were the deep, dark firs at canyon's edge. A few patches of sunlight, white by contrast, shone through the branches.

I lifted my head and squinted. One of the patches had flecks on it. Topped by— I shoved my glasses up my nose — a round face and big, chocolate-colored eyes above a small, curved beak that gave the bird a very scholarly look.
Who cooks you
was the funny call only one bird made.

The spotted owl! Even Jack had never seen one. Sight-ings were rare because the spotted owl itself was so rare.

I stared to make absolutely sure this wasn't a dream. But it couldn't be. There were smudges on my glasses, a trusty sign of real life. You didn't dream in smudges.

SOAC
maintained there was a spotted owl family somewhere in the canyon, most likely off Marisa Drive. Since spotted owls don't build their own nests, the family would have settled in the hollow of a dead tree. From there, usually at dusk, they'd come out to hunt rats, mice and other nummies for dinner.

Yech! I thought. You can have 'em, buddy.

The spotted owl, smaller than other types of owls, shifted on his branch. The effect was of chocolate sprinkles shifting on cream.

Beautiful
buddy, I corrected myself. Heck, dainty eating habits weren't everything.

The owl looked back at me without blinking. He had the calm, self-confident quiet I could never quite manage myself. The self-confidence was the heartbreaker. He didn't realize how close he was to extinction.

I gulped, and the wetness of my eyes had nothing to do with leftover drops from my recent swim.

A flutter of breeze, and thick, dark, needly branches wafted in front of the spotted owl. When they settled back into place, there was just a patch of sunlight again.

I padded softly
around the Urstads' garden. “Who cooks you?” I called. I was hoping the spotted owl would reappear. “Who cooks you?”

“Nobody, I hope,” came the wry voice of my friend Talbot St. John. “What gives, Di? Have you taken to cannibalism?”

Like Pantelli and me, Talbot lived on Wisteria Drive in East Vancouver. Normally, Talbot had to stay in the city and look after his younger sister. His mom worked at an office in the daytime. His dad, Evan, a pianist, played late into the night in bars, so he needed to sleep for most of the day.

Today, however, Mrs. St. John was taking a day off. Talbot had lugged his guitar along on the bus ride over Lions Gate Bridge and up winding Capilano Road to the Urstads'.

The barf-prone Pantelli refused to cross Lions Gate by bus, car, bike or foot. Too high and rickety, he complained of the almost seventy-year-old bridge, though I found it fun. And amazingly scenic, way above Stanley Park and the sparkling Pacific.

“I'll visit you anytime I can,” Talbot promised, setting his guitar on a deck chair, “but I draw the line at being on your lunch menu.”

“Oh, ha ha ha,” I told him. “As it happens, I think I saw a spotted owl this morning. I'm trying to attract him back by imitating his call.”

But my naturalist routine didn't pay off. The only animal who showed up was Napoleon, who instantly looked disappointed that Jack wasn't around.

So Talbot and I settled ourselves on the deck to do some jamming. Like his dad, Talbot was really into music.

“Where's Pantelli?” he demanded.

Pantelli usually jammed with us. He was an ace pianist. Talbot and I thought his talent was natural, but he claimed his mother had just forced him to practice a lot as a way of developing an interest other than trees.

“Pantelli's with his aunt. She thought he needed a few days of quiet.”

“Quiet, as in, away from you?” Talbot grinned at me from under the dark forelock of hair that gave him a permanently soulful look. That is, until you got to know him. Though fairly serious about life, Talbot had a wicked sense of humor.

“As in, I have no idea what you're talking about,” I returned, rather coldly. Unlike him, I failed to find amusement in the negative attitude adults held toward me. I mean, it wasn't like I didn't
try
to be well-behaved.

I tended to be my quietest — except for singing, of course— around Talbot. Maybe because he was naturally quiet himself. Or because we were both so much into music that I forgot about everything else.

Then there was Madge's theory, which was that Talbot brought out a rare, mature, thoughtful side of me. “The rest of us just haven't experienced this,” she'd say.

Talbot and I warmed up with “Sweet Sue,” which I belted as loudly as I could down into the canyon. I was pretending my voice could reach Mother at her new job in the city. I did miss her, not that I'd admit it to anyone but myself.

Then we launched into a song Talbot's dad had written, “The Mask on the Cruise Ship.” It was kind of based on the adventures we'd had on our Alaska cruise in May, except that Evan, who'd been the onboard pianist, had made the lyrics lovey-dovey. Typical of a songwriter, I guess.

Talbot, Evan and I wanted to record a cd one day, with a combination of old songs, like “Sweet Sue,” and some new ones the two of them were writing. As Evan warned us, anyone can book a recording studio: the problem is getting people to listen to what you produce. But we practiced and hoped.

Talbot started doing riffs, or variations, on his dad's song, and I started scatting along with it, which means that I belted out extra notes and nonsense lyrics. Boy, we had fun. And we sure filled the canyon with echoes.

Afterward I fixed us a snack of crackers slathered with peanut butter. Madge would've fixed us something more elegant, but she was busy concentrating on her mural.

I told Talbot more about the spotted owl. “Jack says it's unusual for owls to be out in daytime,” I finished. “He and Madge also point out that I tend to be overly imaginative. So when I told Jack about it on the phone, he maybe three-quarters believed me.”

“I four-quarters believe you,” Talbot said solemnly.

That was a nice thing about Talbot. He never scoffed at me— an otherwise common reaction to my claims.

I handed Talbot a plate of crackers and peanut butter. “Jack also says that if it got out that someone saw, or thought they saw, a spotted owl, we'd have birdwatchers, would-be scientists and yahoos in general tramping up and down this side of the canyon. Which would be almost as dangerous to the spotted owl family as logging.”

Talbot gestured with a cracker. “The publicity would be unnecessary too. soac's already given the district council its research. About a spotted owl family living near here, I mean. Sounds like it's the research that convinced Councillor Cordes to go for the new bylaw.”

I nodded and replied, but nothing came out. The insides of my mouth were stuck together with peanut butter.

We both munched happily away. I had just reached for another cracker when I heard a rustle. I glanced round. Part of the privet hedge appeared to be boogeying.

“Napoleon?” I said, except that, with peanut butter gluing my tongue to the top of my mouth, it came out as “Nmfmgth?”

A bald human head, as opposed to a fluffy orange cat one, stuck out of the hedge. A young man's raisin-like eyes stared at Talbot and me for a moment; then the bald head hurriedly withdrew.

I happened to know Rowena wasn't home. She'd popped by earlier to see if we wanted any produce from the organic market that she was bicycling off to.

I decided to investigate. I ran over to the hedge, shoved my arms into the thick of it and pushed the branches apart.

As well as a lot of scratches, I got a spyglass view of the bald guy hurrying to the side of the house. “Thup!” I yelled.

Bald Guy paused and frowned at me. “ ‘Thup'?” he chortled.

I thrust one hand out in a vain effort to thup, that is, stop, him. Why couldn't people leave Rowena's property alone?

The hand I thrust still clutched a gooily spread cracker.
Slap
! — it glommed onto the young man's jogging pants. He started running again.

I stood up, colliding with Talbot. “What gives, Dinah?” he demanded. “A strange impulse to prune hedges with your bare hands?”

I gulped down the last of the peanut butter. “An intruder,” I explained. “Let's see if we can catch him round the front!”

But Rowena's
front garden was as still as a painting. Bald Guy had jogged out of view.

From his position on the porch, Napoleon raised one eyelid halfway, examined us scornfully and went to sleep again.