Watch the birdie

[Barry Arrowsmith]

A-a-a-a-a-h.
'Scuse me, just easing me boots off.
Time to unwind a bit, relax in the pastoral peace of the 
Semi-Retirement Home for Mendicant Posters. A closed 
Order of course, dedicated to the solitary contemplation 
of past glories and words that will not be written in the 
future (odd how often "on mature reflection" equates to 
"can't be bothered"), where the hurly-burly of other boards
signifies little more than the crackling of thorns under a pot. 

Nice. Restful. Even bucolic.
Why, there's even a capriform even-toed ungulate wandering
around the place. Fabulous beast by all accounts, scratch his 
horns and he masticates. Might almost be from the realms of 
fiction. Mind you, there are other things from the realms of 
fiction that could be usefully employed in the everyday world. 
That Owl Post thingy, for instance. What  a boon that'd be. 
No more standing in a Post Office queue, inching forward at 
a speed inferior to that of  a glacier with bunions, just to get a 
damn stamp to wish an intensely irritating cousin (seemingly 
hell-bent on a breeding program designed to produce the most
nauseating kids west of the Urals) a Happy Christmas. No more 
leaden-footed, hellebore-crushing mail deliverer who practices 
his advanced origami on your precious post as he drags you out 
of the shower to take delivery of a package for - who? Not you, 
mate, it's for next door. Yep;  by-passing all that for the cost of 
a few owl pellets and a moribund mouse or two would be bliss.

And then I got to thinking - why'd she choose owls?
Generally speaking owls haven't had a particularly good press 
throughout history. Came off best among the Greeks; symbol of 
Athene - though in her attribute as protector rather than as a 
symbol of wisdom.

Romans? Not good. An owl hoot presaged a death. Nail a dead 
one to the door to ward off evil. Witches transformed themselves 
into owls and sucked the blood of babies. Obviously a  stumbling
attempt  to fulfill a cultural need later satisfied by  the invention 
of Gothic Horror.

England much the same, though an owl carcass would also protect
a house against lightning. The "bird of doom" according to Wordsworth.

So a more or less strictly nocturnal predatory loner with a bad 
folkloric reputation gets picked by Jo as the WW equivalent of UPS. 
Strange. More so since JKR seems to dig into mythology a lot when 
designating roles for her beasties. Oh, there are changes of course, 
ghouls being an obvious example. Can't see the one in the Weasley 
attic raiding the local graveyard for lunch, somehow. Molly would go
spare when it tracked dirt up the stairs.

Don't know about you, but thinking about it I'd have expected 
something from the Corvidae; the raven's your bird for positive reader
recognition when it comes to fantasy. Supposedly royal birds (Arthur 
is supposed to have turned into one), then there's Hugin and Mugin, 
memory and thought, Odin's equivalent of the internet. He wanted to 
know something? Listen to the birds. And if you want a bit of atmosphere,
gibbering old Edgar A. Poe found them suitable for his purposes too.

Why stick to any one Order at all, Corvidae or Strigiformes? 
Spread it about a bit, get the fans discussing the significance of 
Lockhart's cuckoo, Fudge's pigeon, why Neville has a turkey. 
Though Crouch!Moody's  vulture would have been a bit of a give-away.

Hmm. Come to think of it, Errol is the closest thing to a dead duck 
I've seen in the books; what does this mean for vol. 6?

Kneasy