Owl Encounter

I love owls. One day my friend asked me if I believed in animal totems, and I told her I hadn’t really given it much thought, even though I knew people who felt very strongly that a certain animal was their guardian or spirit guide. Shortly after that conversation, I came home from work on my birthday to find an owl perched on the power pole next to our house. I stood on the lawn for quite a while trying to get a good photograph, but it was getting dark and he had his head turned away from me most of the time.

A couple of weeks later I came home to find two owls perched on the fence near my house. I got my camera and crept down to snap some photos, ducking behind the bushes trying to get close to them without scaring them off. They sat there and looked at me while I photographed them for a few minutes, then flew off.

Two weeks after that, I came home to find three owls on the fence. I’ve never seen three together like that before. I ran in the house, grabbed my camera and got down the road to them as quickly and quietly as I could. One of them had gone by the time I got there, but two were left. I crept closer and closer and the two of them continued to sit there, blinking their eyes at me. I felt an amazing connection with them, and felt like they had given me permission to capture their images with my camera.

I looked down for a split second and when I looked back up, they were gone. They flew off without making a sound. I felt their energy though, and then one flew right over my head, no more than twenty feet above the ground, completely silent and majestic. The wingspan was huge.

I felt very blessed to have had such an amazing owl encounter, and turned to walk back home when I saw another owl perched on a different fence, so I took a few shots of him and continued on home. Then there was yet another owl farther up the fence – they were everywhere!

The next day when I was telling my friend about the owls, she said to me, “Do you think you’ve found your animal totem?” What do you think?