I recently retired from working. I was a night watchman for over forty years. I worked at a factory that manufactured jewelry, using precious metals, mostly silver and gold and occasionally platinum. My days off were Monday and Tuesday. On those days, I continued to sleep during the day and stayed awake all night.

And now that I’m retired, I have every intention of slowly adjusting to sleeping at night and being awake during the day as most people do. Unfortunately, this goal has not been as easy to reach as I hoped.

The first couple of months of my retirement, I tried adjusting my sleep pattern by going to bed fifteen minutes later each day. And I hoped over time I would be able to go to bed between eleven o’clock and 11:30 PM over time. I calculated that I would be able to achieve this goal in about seven and a half months.

Unfortunately, what happened was that I was unable to fall asleep at all. And I began lying wide awake for hours every night sometimes; I never fell asleep. This pattern went on for weeks. I eventually started taking Melatonin to help me fall asleep. Melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone in our bodies. My change in my sleeping pattern had a detrimental effect on my ability during the day. And I was unable to accomplish anything. if one of my friends called to see how I was or asked me to meet them for lunch. I would fall asleep while they were talking on the phone to me.

Then one lonely night, while I stared silently at the ceiling fan over my bed, I heard a weird noise outside my bedroom window. It went on intermittently for over an hour. It was a familiar sound, but I couldn’t quite place it. I finally gathered the strength to get up and look out the window. There is a large Cedar tree within six feet of my bedroom window, and I observed something moving about within the tree limbs.

But I couldn’t quite make out what it was. Some kind of bird, I thought. Maybe a hawk. I had seen one recently flying over our pond. They were probably scooping out the pond for the Koi that lived there and were blissfully unaware that their very lives were in danger. I finally decided to put a net over the pond. But then I became concerned that the hawk would get caught in the net and drown. And so I took the net off. At this point, even I realized that I was becoming obsessive. I knew it was probably from my lack of sleep.

I quietly opened the window about twelve inches, and I could hear the strange noise again, it was a somewhat familiar noise was emanating from the tree. And then I heard the noise more clearly it was “who, who, who.” My exhausted brain didn’t immediately recognize the sound. And suddenly, from the depths of my subconscious, the word OWL came to the surface. I shouted, “it’s a. It’s an owl.” I reacted as if I had discovered a previously unknown star or planet before my eyes. I laughed out loud. I have a great love of birds. When I was a child, I used to close my eyes and wish that I would somehow magically turn into a bird and fly. I spent hours during the summer sitting in my backyard, hoping that I would be able to grow wings and be able to fly spontaneously.

I didn’t share this thought with anyone, even my closest friend, since my family and friends already thought I was a weird child.

I open the screen on my window and put my head out the window. And sure enough, I heard the hoot of a night owl. I had frequently found the remains of small rodents and squirrels under that cedar tree, and now I realized that my owl was hunting in my back yard. We have seventeen beautiful Cedar trees on our small property. In addition to a beautiful garden in the front. It attracted all kinds of wildlife, birds, feral cats, chipmunks, squirrels, possums, raccoons, and all sorts of insects. And now I had an owl. How wonderful. I felt as if I had finally found that pot of gold I searched for as a child.

One night, I decided that I would stay up late and sit outside in the backyard and wait for my owl to appear. I brought my camera and waited patiently. It was well past ten PM. And the mosquitoes were out in force. I had sprayed myself with repellent, but the mosquitoes didn’t seem to be deterred. I expected I would be covered with bites in an hour or so. It didn’t help that the pond was less than ten feet from the Ceder tree where my owl spent the night waiting for his prey to appear. I read that an owl can eat up to a thousand mice a year. Can you imagine having such an appetite? I would be the size of a house if I ate that much.

I started dozing off several times. I would nod off, and my head would jerk, and I would wake up vaguely confused about where I was and what the hell I was doing outside in the middle of the night. And then it would all come back to me. About the third time it happened to me, I thought, maybe I am nuts. And then I thought well if I’m a nut, I’m nuts. You have to learn to accept your nature and roll with it at some point in your life. And if people don’t like it, well, so be it. Their loss, isn’t it? Most people are dead boring and never have an original thought in their mind.

Suddenly, I heard a swishing noise in the tree above me. I quietly raised my head with my eyes to the sky, and there she was, sitting on the uppermost branch of the tree like a queen sitting on her throne. I could see her clearly by the moonlight. I tried to maintain complete quiet and not move a muscle. It was difficult because I was stiff from sitting in one position for so long. And my muscles were crying out in pain, wanting me to move and stretch. But I didn’t. I remained steadfast.

And then she was up and flying towards the prey that moved, and only she was able to see and hear. One of the things I found so interesting about owls is the fact that they can pinpoint the location of their prey because of their ears, which are located at different heights on their heads. They are the ultimate hunters, quick and precise. Her wingspread was large and before I knew it she returned with her prey. She would probably stay for several hours and hunt. I decided that the next time she flew off I would quietly leave and try and go back to my bed and hopefully sleep.

That night I fell asleep shortly after I climbed wearily into my bed. I had a dream that I was a magnificent owl flying through the night sky lit only by the stars and the moon. The next morning I woke up and the sun was beginning to rise. I looked over at my alarm clock and it was almost seven in the morning. I could hardly take in that I had finally slept for several hours.

I picked up the diary that I kept by my bedside. And I wrote about my experience the previous night. And then the thought occurred to me that I may have dreamed the whole thing. I decided to throw on my clothes and shoes and go to my backyard under the Cedar tree and see if I could find any evidence of the owl’s appearance. And sure enough, under the Cedar tree, I found the tiny remnants of the owl’s prey. It wasn’t a dream. I had truly experienced something both wonderful and terrible.

Several months later, in late winter, I noticed two owls in the tree. I realized that they must be getting ready to lay eggs. I couldn’t contain the joy I felt when I realized that I would witness this miracle. After about a month, I noticed that one of the eggs hatched and the two remaining ones hatched soon. I cannot express how overjoyed I was to have this family of owls inhabiting my backyard.

The mother and father owl took turns feeding and sitting on the nest. I wanted to watch the babies being fed so badly that I went out and purchased a pair of binoculars made explicitly for bird watching. And for the next four weeks, I watched this family thrive and the babies grow. After the babies hatched about the fifth week, they began to venture from the nest. I was terrified that one of the feral cats in my neighborhood would kill the babies. But it turned out that the mother and father owl kept a close eye on their young.

And I read that owls are known to have eaten cats. And that’s when I began to obsess about the cats in my neighborhood getting eaten by my owls. There was no end to the things that my mind would obsess about and keep me awake at night worrying about it. I warned all my neighbors not to let their cats out at night. Since I had a pair of nesting owls in my backyard, I found out that owls hoot at night to ward off intruders as a warning. I kept my nightly vigil of them on the down-low since I didn’t want them to move to a different location.

My neighbors have begun to think that I am somewhat eccentric. I can’t deny it. I am what I am. There was no use fighting my nature. At this late stage of my life, I can no more change who and what I am than my owls can change their nature of being predators. I have come to accept myself because of the owls.

By the time Fall was about to arrive, I noticed that the fledglings were staying longer and longer away from the nest and then not returning at all. I surmised that they were mature enough to start a life of their own. And the most important lesson I learned from the owls was to accept one’s nature. And what I came to realize over that first year of retirement was that I wasn’t retiring from life but just one stage of my life and that I was and will always be a Night Owl. And I am curious, creative, and weird, and I’m alright with that.