They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.
Beth and I dissected owl pellets. Owls swallow rodents whole and vomit up the things they don't need and can't digest, leaving hard little packages of fur and bone. We picked into them, drinking tea and endeavouring to keep the music otherworldly enough, taking an underworld journey on our coffee table. The bones are such tiny things, and the hair sometimes was barely digested at all, leaving fuzzy patches that we thought adorable. We named our skulls. Mine are Mister Bones, Mister Bones being the smallest of the three, Ms. Dirt, and Miss Dust. They, along with the other tiny bones and teeth, are residing in a porcelain box given to me by Tom and Erica with a butterfly on the lid, and the whole lot is inside of my curios cabinet. Poor mice. Twice, now, bits of them have been deemed irrelevant and discarded. The owl took what he wanted, as did Beth and I, and no one ever asked them. Perhaps there's a spider in my house I don't know about, an old Jewish tin and rag man-spider, who'll sell the fur to an ant who'll make of it a coat for a bee.