Nature's Real Ghosts

 

With Halloween just around the corner, my 2 ½ year old is seeing ghosts!  They are in decorations everywhere… at the grocery store, in the neighbor’s yard, at the library, and even at preschool, where she made one.  Of course my daughter doesn’t really know exactly what they are.  I’ve told her that they are pretend.  We dress up for Halloween as something we are not for pretend and sometimes to be scary for fun.  And ghosts say, “Boo!”  She gets that because she likes to play scary tiger or dinosaur and roar to be scary for fun.  But before she gets too inquisitive about what ghosts are, I decided to be proactive and tell her about the ghost owl.  Hopefully that will hold her over until she is old enough to understand more about Halloween.

The ghost owl is another name for the barn owl, the most common owl in the world.  They are naturally found in grasslands, farmlands, and woodlands or where ever they can find plenty of small rodents to eat.  Unfortunately, rodents like to be near people because people unintentionally provide an abundance of food for the rodents, especially on farms.  Barn owls have noticed this relationship and often choose old barns and buildings as nesting sites.  Consequently, the most common name for this species of owl is the barn owl.  Having a barn owl living on a farm is good for the farm because these owls can eat almost 1000 rodents each, every year.  That is obviously beneficial to the farmer since rodents typically raid grain supplies on the farm.  Barn owls also help people in general by controlling rodent populations since too many rodents living in an area can increase the probability that the rodent colonies become reservoirs for diseases that can affect human health. 

Unfortunately, a long time ago when people were often frightened by things they didn’t know or understand, these owls were viewed badly based upon negative myths and folklore.  It’s easy to appreciate how that happened because of normal barn owl behavior.  As I’ve already mentioned, barn owls like to live in old barns or abandoned buildings.  Where better for a ghost story to start?  In addition, these owls don’t hoot; they scream!  And if someone were to go into an old barn or building to investigate the scream, that person may be met with a display like no other.  First the barn owl will lower its head and sway it from side to side while lifting its wings, looking like a sheeted ghost.  Then to defend its territory, the barn owl may take silent flight toward the intruder.  Its white wings reflect the light from the farmer’s lantern and look like a glowing ghost floating down from the rafters without a sound or maybe even with a bone chilling scream.  Then the owl, with talons extended, lunges at the intruder and then flies away without a sound as if disappearing into thin air.  That is how the barn owl also earned the name, ghost owl. 

As I tell my daughter, some stories are started by people who were scared long ago by things they didn’t know or understand, and those stories continue today because they are fun to tell.  Long ago, farmers would spread stories of a haunted barn or an abandoned building, but we know today that those stories had their roots in very real nature, the behavior of the common barn owl, Tyto alba.  But on Halloween each year, we continue those old ghost stories just for fun. 

After telling my daughter about the ghost owl, we then looked at pictures of barn owls and made a tissue paper ghost modeled after the ghost owl.  You can do it with your child too.  Just take two pieces of tissue paper, wad up one and place it in the middle of the other.  Wrap the outside tissue around the inside one and put a rubber band around the outside to hold the inside tissue in place.  But instead of making a normal ghost face on it, draw a heart (barn owl faces are heart shaped), eyes, and nose/beak for the face.  Then we’ll all have ghost owl decorations at our houses this Halloween, in celebration of nature’s real ghosts and the source of some of the most enduring folklore in the world.