In Vermont, binding over owls at King Arthur Baking Company

Usually, I do not engage in a casual discussion with a stranger, especially at this bakery cafe, where I come with my laptop to work on the background of the comfortable aroma in the oven. Also, it seems that no good can come from a conversation these days, when every new news title makes me start chocolate croissants and pistachi cakes. But i love owls.

“I am a volunteer at the Institute of Natural Sciences in Vermont every week,” I explain.

“Oh, we like there!” The woman says. “What are you doing?”

I never know how to answer this question. How to explain the rough details of cleaning after birds? I arrive at dawn, early enough that the exhibition owls are still ugly. My fitness tracker estimates that I burn a thousand calories at each change, washing the rocks of the poultry, throwing heavy hoses and raising dead animals. The completion is a quiet time, with some of the most majestic creatures of nature-standing to see them stretching their wings in the sunlight, each feathers that throw down like socks on a line of clothes.

Fairlee, Chittenden, SullivanAnd the rest of the exhibition birds are there because they were hit by cars or fallen from the trees and are not able to survive in the wild. They are all appointed for the places where the wounds suffered.

My body hurts me when I finished with every change. I look like a zebra, my black jacket sprinkled in poultry stripes. And yet, in a way, when I get back home, I feel much less depressed by the state of the world than when the alarm has extinguished me that morning.

“I work with the exhibition birds,” I say. “I raise all the remains of food and clean the room before opening in the morning. A kind of kind of real estate agents set the houses. “

There is no need to tell this sweet lady that I raise rat tails, mouse heads and other untouched pieces. I am used to that now, although when I first started, I couldn’t eat ketchup for some time.

“We have an owl who lives in our yard,” she says.

“Just like us!”

The neighborhood research for Owls is one of my favorite things to do. I keep a pair of binoculars on my desk, so I can see them with our eyes on the whole lawn. It feels like a perfect synchronization to see one in a white pin.

The woman sipped her coffee, then goes to her husband to call her. “We bring our way.”

Excuse me? I heard that right? This woman brings her fresh roadkill? Even I don’t do that!

“Whenever we see a dead animal on the road, we stop and lift it, then go home and let it out for it,” she says.

This is the next level dedication. Should I do this for my owl too?

Our coffees arrive and break up. Although our meeting was short, it raised my spirits for the rest of the day. Someone from there loved the birds as much as me. I reminded me of the serendipit feeling that comes with a owl in the wild, the joy that comes with being at the right place at the right time.

It may have been possible for a sentence to arouse a significant connection. Maybe I just needed to relieve myself on my introverted ways. And maybe it’s time to start traveling with a shovel.

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Betsy Vereckey is a writer who lives in Vermont. Send comments to [email protected]. Tell you the story. Send an e-mail to an unpublished 650-word essay on a relationship at [email protected]. Please note: We do not respond to references that we will not follow.