Читать книгу My Ten Years in a Quandary - Robert C Benchley - Страница 20

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A graduate student in the Ornithology Department of Cornell University is looking for data on horned owls. He is writing a thesis for his doctorate on "Is the Horned Owl a Friend or an Enemy of the Farmer?" and wants people to send in their experiences.

I do not know so much about the farming end of it, but I can testify that the horned owls in my room are definitely unfriendly. I sometimes wish that I had never let them in.

* * * * *

There are only two of them, and so I don't suppose that any extensive conclusions can be drawn. They may just be two particularly unfriendly owls by nature. I, too, may not be doing my part. It takes two or three to make a quarrel. Possibly if I were to throw them a smile now and then they would be more chummy.

But I don't feel like smiling at them. They don't inspire friendliness. They just sit and look at me all night and sleep all day. I have even tried sleeping during the day myself and going out at night, just to get away from their everlasting scrutiny, but that isn't a natural way to live. I can't rearrange my whole life just for a couple of horned owls.

* * * * *

I asked Mr. MacGregor what to do about them, and he said that he didn't know.

"Is that all you've got to say?" I asked him.

"It's all for the present," he replied. He didn't seem to want to talk about them very much.

"Do you think we'd like them any better if they were stuffed?" I asked.

"No," he said shortly.

So I dropped the subject and tried to forget. The owls were sitting on the top of a bookcase at the time, and I put a screen up in front of them. This helped a little, but it was almost worse at night to look at the screen and know that they were sitting behind there with their eyes wide open, even though I couldn't see them. A couple of nights I even thought I heard them whispering.

* * * * *

Finally, one day, I said to MacGregor, "I don't think you're doing very much to help this situation."

"What situation is that?" he asked.

"The owl situation," I said.

"Had you thought of moving to another house?" he asked. Mr. MacGregor doesn't sleep here, and so the thing had not reached the proportions in his mind that it had in mine. He has no owls out where he sleeps.

"That's all very well for you to say," I snapped back, my nerves finally giving way, "but how are we going to move the bookcase? Who's going to take the screen down, in the first place?"

"I guess you're right," said MacGregor, and turned and walked away.

That is where the matter stands today. I am afraid that I haven't been able to give much help to the Cornell student, but I will give him two horned owls if he wants them—if he will come and get them.