Messengers
May 31, 2026
When I was young, maybe six years old, I saw my grandmother seize a broom and rather violently chase away an owl that had momentarily landed on the end of our clothesline. She was clearly agitated and driven to banish that owl away from her presence. I had never seen my grandmother react so actively and quickly.
I asked one of my aunts why Grandma acted like that, and she told me, for my first time, of the Owl and its role as a messenger - often of death. The belief is that if one hears an owl hoot at least three times on three consecutive nights then something is going to happen to someone in the household. My grandmother experienced an owl hooting three times for three nights just before my grandfather died, and since then she hated the presence of owls and made sure to send them away if she ever saw one.
I thought that was an interesting belief and story, but I never had any significant personal dealings with owls until I was older. Once, while my family hosted a dinner for a group of my college friends while we were on Spring Break, a pure white Great Horned Owl flew just a few feet over our heads toward the elder singer then off into the night. She was beautiful and silent.
Even more years later, my parents, my mom’s sisters (my aunts), and my uncle (one of my aunt’s husband) were all older and living together in my mom’s house. I would help with keeping the yard maintained and feeding the animals. Aside from that Spring Break dinner, I don’t remember ever seeing or hearing an owl in the wild. One night while feeding the dogs on the northern end of the homesite, I heard what I assumed was owl hooting. It hooted, over the course of a few minutes, three times. I thought it was ominous, but not overwhelmingly threatening. However, the next night and the night after that, I heard the same hooting. That’s when I became concerned.
Two days later, yet without hearing any owls again, my mom called to tell me my uncle had passed away in my old bedroom where he had been staying. I knew I had heard from the Messenger.
Messengers visited me in the exact same fashion twice more within three years after my uncle’s passing. Three months after my uncle, my mom passed. Thirty-six months after my uncle, my dad passed. It would be six years after my dad’s departure that I would hear from the Owl again.
Six years after my dad moved on, I was again feeding the dogs at my mom’s house, which was now only occupied by my two elderly aunts, when three quick hoots came out of the old, tall eucalyptus tree next to my Grandma Ruth’s (my grandfather Lawrence’s sister’s house). Again, I heard the hoots at dusk the following two days then nothing, but then one of my aunts was admitted into the hospital with an infection that turned septic. Within a week of hearing the owl’s hoots, my eldest aunt had to make the decision to end life-support for her baby sister.
Not long after my aunt’s death, my last living aunt mysteriously became totally paralyzed in her legs and lost most of her ability to move her arms. She needed way more constant help than I was able to provide, and she ended up moving into a skilled nursing group home. Right around the same time, my aunt moved out of my mom’s house, my own immediate family and I moved to a new house next to an older city park on the edge of the reservation. The park with its proximity to the open land of the Rez, well watered grounds and tall, mature trees was a refuge for wildlife. A couple years after moving in, first one and then a pair of owls settled into the same neighborhood. At first, when we first heard the hooting, my wife and I joked about “Desperado”, as we called him, making noisy calls every night in pursuit of a mate, but I was wary of the nightly songs.
Over the years we’ve lived next to the park, we’ve heard owl hoots most nights now, and there have been a good number of deaths - including that of my aunt in the group home - but there have also been just challenging circumstances as well as good moments.
See, as my grandmother, my mom, my aunts, and all my elder teachers related, while the owl may be offer warnings of adversity and even death, it is also ultimately only a messenger - and sometimes the messages may, as well, be good.
Living with the owls so close, I learned to take the time to really “listen” to them - rather than just hear hoots, I allowed the feel of the air and the earth mix with the weight and feel of the resonant music made by the owls to give me an intuitive understanding of what may be confronting me. I came to understand the owls are simply messengers and may be useful complements to the normal up and down experience of life.
I have been fortunate to become friendly and understanding of the Messenger. While I do believe the prophecy of death is a true possibility, I understand that death is also just an inevitable cycle in life - as is birth and fruitful and blessed growth.
Desperado did find a companion, and the pair have had a number of young ones over the last few years. My avian friends even find our home welcoming enough that the parents have decided it’s the best location to teach their young ones to fly. It’s somewhat surreal to witness, given our traditional beliefs, but it is also beautiful to see the owl family congregate around us as they engage, as we all do, in living well with the time we are given.
