Owl
NOT FOUL
Owls are night-flying predatory birds who hunt largely by sound.
They also, however, have extremely sensitive eyes, and can, in fact, pinpoint the location of a brown field mouse on a pile of brown dry leaves on a brown dirt floor clear across a barn using only the light emitted by the phosphorescent fungus that's growing in the cracks of the barn roof.
The downside to their extremely sensitive dark vision is that they are also hypersensitive to daylight, which has given rise to the myth that owls are blind during the day. Nothing could be further from the truth -- but the fact remains that they can feel some distress in full sun, which is why, during the day, most owls one sees are likely to be wearing sunglasses.
Owls in mythology[edit | edit source]
Owls are generally represented in stories as wise. One may wonder how they got such a reputation, given that they live on a diet of live mice, and after eons of evolution the best system they've been able to think up for dealing with the bones and the fur is to barf after every meal.[1]
In fact, one need look no farther than the preceding section of this article to understand how they acquired such a reputation.
Among common birds, the only birds one ever sees wearing glasses are owls. In our culture -- for reasons which are not entirely clear[2] -- wearing glasses is associated with being wise[3]. So naturally people, who anthropomorphize absolutely everything including such inhuman things as mosquitoes and computers[4], conclude from the fact that owls wear glasses that they must also be wise.