Inexplicably odd  things happen. They're often classified as 'coincidental', 'circumstantial', or any number of other explanations' 'odd, but meaningless', and likely as explanations they suffice, shrugging off any other, unlikely possibilities. But these peculiar things do make you wonder...

In our conversation last night with our younger son, he told us about an interaction he'd experienced with an owl. He's a biologist and certainly possesses some insights and a level of understanding that eludes us. COVID has played havoc with his professional and recreational life just as it has everyone else's. On the other hand, we and all of our three children have the great good fortune to each live in walking distance to area forests. So access to nature and casual recreation is always within our reach.

Lately, our son has been taking short evening walks through the forest located right directly across from his house in inner Vancouver. A forest that has protected status, the property of University of British Columbia. A few nights back during his walk along some of the forest trails he became aware of a large bird close by. He put on his head lamp and there was a barred owl facing him. He'd been alerted by its flight, landing on a fairly low branch of a tree, close to where he stood.

The bird fixed its eyes on him unwaveringly. And they both watched one another, unmoving for a few minutes. Until our son decided to move along and leave the owl to its nighttime foraging. As he moved on he suddenly felt a blow on the back of his head and surmised that the bird had warned him he was treading on his hunting territory, and he turned and watched the bird fly off further into the interior. The ultimate nocturnal predator.

Today while doing the house-cleaning, I was dusting some bookshelves and a small paper-back was dislodged, flying off the bookshelf to land front-cover side up. As I bent to retrieve it, I read the title: "I Heard The Owl Call My Name". And thought how peculiar a coincidence it was. I don't recall reading the book. So I placed it on my bedside table, and as soon as I'm finished with my current read, I'll pick it up; it was a popular book in its day.

Speaking of the out-of-the-way. Yesterday I advised my stove that it was time it gave its oven a cleaning. And so it did just that. On occasion, say once a week, I'll sponge out the oven interior with a hot, soapy sponge, but sometimes it needs a good cleaning since it's used quite a lot in this household. Our 35-year-old stove that has served us so well, proceeded to clean itself.

The story behind that stove is that when we had returned to Canada from a number of years living abroad we decided to buy new household appliances to replace the ones that we had used for a similar number of years. The gas stove would be replaced by an electric stove. I didn't appreciate the fact that a gas stove tends to result over time in a mysterious airborne splatter of a greasy substance on walls, light fixtures, the tops of kitchen cupboards.

So we chose the stove we preferred, a Kenmore, and it was delivered to our house. It took me a little while to realize that what we ended up with wasn't quite the stove we had chosen and paid for. This was clearly a deluxe model that resembled the stove we chose, but had features we didn't even realize existed. Such as self-cleaning. Accordingly, the oven door is very thick and heavy and gets locked into place when the oven knob is turned to 'clean', and the cleaning time is set. During which the stove interior gets up to an impressively hot temperature, burning off any food residue. And does a bang-up job; no fuss, no work on my part.

We thought,when we took Jackie and Jillie out to the ravine yesterday for our usual trip through the trails, that it was fairly cold at a windy -10C. But last night the temperature dipped to -20, and when we woke this morning it had nudged up to -16. So Jackie and Jillie spent some outdoor time in the backyard today. They thought, and we agreed, that it was time enough spent outdoors on a brutally cold day. So no ravine trek today. And possibly tomorrow, when the forecast is for an even colder day...

At one time being out in -20C for a trek through the woods wouldn't have fazed us the least bit. That's when we could muster up some energy to attain a good speed to keep warm. Now, it takes whatever energy we can spare to take our time climbing hills in the ravine, and our trek is sustainable because we 'take our time'. In this kind of cold, taking your time means insufficient expenditure of energy to maintain bodily warmth. In this kind of low temperature, exposure to extreme cold can readily equal skin-frost. So now, not today, possibly not tomorrow, either.