So, with a “thanks” and a smile, a wink and a nod, and a flash of green lightning she was in the West side of the tree, where clustered old acorns had hung unfallen from the tree, turning from tough and brown to brittle and black as they braved the winter winds in their woody caps all season. This is where Mr. Owl had made his roost. Mr. Owl was sitting still as a statue. With his feathered horns above his head, his marbled plumes, and (as those fair-nosed Romans might say) his arching beak, he was just as impressive.
“Mr. Owl?” she asked softly. The great owl flashed open a single yellow eye that blazed like a candle’s flame.
“Oo, helloo-oo.” he answered warmly, still mostly asleep. While Miranda was huffing and puffing all in a tizzy, he stretched and cracked his wide old wings, and yawned and sighed resignedly as he woke himself from a philosophical dream. He had been dozing as he was more than something of a night owl. “Oo?” he asked inquisitively, as Miranda waited anxiously.
“Did you hear a noise? It sounded like trouble!” she said.
He thought a moment. Mr. Owl spoke the languages of the winds and the waters and was very old and very wise. “Noo-oo.” he said raising and ruffling his feathery brow like a mystic from the East. “But remember, Miranda, dear, when there is trouble to loo-ook before you swoo-oop! I’d tell you-oo the story that goes with the moral, but I can see you-oo are in a hurry.” Sometimes Mr. Owl’s words made Miranda think; sometimes that was a good thing.
So, with a “thanks” and a smile, a wink and a nod, a chatter of her teeth and a flash of green lightning Miranda was knocking just below the black rotted-out hole in a dead southerly part of the red oak tree. Mr. Snake used this as a door to his hollow branch cavern. Miranda put her wee hand to her ear and leaned towards the hole to listen. She thought she heard a scratching sound. She waited and listened, waited and listened.
“YESsssssss!” Mr. Snake said in a loud and trailing voice when his head was just behind her.
“Eep!” Miranda leapt off the branch with a yelp. Mr. Snake had been gliding silently along the branch, closing the distance. Miranda nearly had the life scared out of her by that sneaky snake. He was a weird one. He had the ability to make others think he was somewhere else or doing something else. He probably wasn’t really evil, no, but he sure liked scaring people. Even now that Miranda was hovering above the branch with her wings buzzing like a hummingbird’s, she was frowning and wrinkling her nose and not wanting to get near him.
Miranda said to herself “He wouldn’t eat me. We’re neighbours.” But that was little comfort because Mr. Snake had once tried to eat Miss Mourning Dove. Mr. Owl bit the snake by the tail and threw him out of the tree to protect her. A clump of moss broke his fall. Miss Dove escaped unharmed, but ever since then, Miss Dove called him “Mr. You-know-who”. Miranda approached cautiously.
Mr. Snake’s golden body wrapped skilfully around the branch and relaxed. He had red speckles down his back and his diamond shaped head ceaselessly flicked a pink and black forked tongue. His senses were so sharp that he could detect the faintest traces of the faintest scents and even the direction they were coming from. His glassy black eyes stared between this world and another. He knew things deeply, with his skin and his bones, in a way that no else could know them. It was too bad he was so spooky. Before Miranda said anything, Mr. Snake spoke.
“Yesss, I see something serious, a sound, a scream, somebody new, so nobody I like, sounded sort of... by the stream... South somewhere.” His body uncoiled from the branch and in an instant he glided into the darkness of his cavern.
Miranda raised her eyebrows high and her eyes bugged widely. She really had no idea what to think of that one. On the one hand, he had just helped her; on the other, he had tried to eat Miss Mourning Dove. Miranda thought him not a little bizarre.