unseenphil:

So way back in high school, I was roped into attending a church youth group trip for Spring break. We were all set up in a series of cabins in a national park that also served as a  Manatee preserve with a hot spring. Such exciting events took place as ‘multiple nature walks’, ‘prayer meetings’  ‘swimming near the hot spring because if you get too far away from the spring, the water’s not as clear and there are gators’ and ‘Unseenphil packed more books than clothes and fucks off somewhere to read because holy shit, I can only take so much being around people who keep wanting to hold hands and pray together’.

As it happens, there was an owl nesting near our cabin, and apparently, my ‘goes off somewhere to read and be alone’ schedule matched up nearly perfectly with its ‘get offended by the presence of humans near its nest and divebomb a motherfucker’ schedule.

So basically every time I was nowhere to be found, the Owl attacked.

This happened about 6 times in the course of a 3 day, 4 night trip.

By the end of the trip, at least two people were convinced I was the owl, and 3-4 others didn’t really believe it but went along with it because it was funny.

(This was probably not helped by the title of one of the books I was reading being “The Compleat Enchanter” and this being a church group with  kids who thought there were such things as were-owls.)

…I didn’t find out about all this until about two weeks after the trip when I was asked if I could only turn into the Owl while in Florida, and finally got the story from someone, at which point I just said “Whoo would even believe that?” because of -course- that’s what you say when you find out people think you can turn into an owl.

I can only imagine how this would have turned out if this had been post Harry Potter.

So yeah. If you want to freak out teenaged Presbyterians, arrange for a coincidental owl.