Owls in the Family

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1961

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-11

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 5 Summary

Toward the end of the school year, Billy spends his class time daydreaming of his owls and longing to be outside. At the end of each school day, he jumps on his bike and gets home as fast as he can, letting out “owl-whoops” as he gets closer so his owls know he is coming. He then lets them out of their cage, and the three spend the rest of the evening together. Wol typically jumps onto Billy’s shoulder, while Weeps waits until Billy picks him up and places him there. Billy remarks that Weeps seems too afraid to do things on his own. Billy carries the owls on his shoulder when he goes to play with the other kids. Because everyone except Bruce and Murray is afraid of the owls, Billy never has to worry about being bothered by bullies when his owls are there to protect him.

The owls continue to grow and reach their full size by mid-June, although neither owl has learned to fly. Billy reasons that this is because they have no parents to model the art of flight for them. However, Wol does eventually teach himself to fly when he gets stuck high in a tree and falls, spreading his wings instinctively and surprising both the humans and himself by experimenting with the art of flight. Eventually he falls, and everyone laughs, which makes him so upset he retreats to his cage to sulk until the following day. He improves in his flying over time, but Billy believes that he prefers to stay on the ground, while Weeps never even attempts to fly. Before the end of the school year, Wol starts breaking the chicken wire on his cage to escape. Billy is worried about the safety of the owls at first. One morning, however, after hearing a scuffle, he finds Wol sitting on a dead cat, and later, he sees Wol injuring a neighbor’s German shepherd. After these two incidents, Billy decides that the neighborhood animals will no longer bother Wol.

Chapter 6 Summary

In the summer, Billy, Bruce, and Murray hear about a pet parade that the town is hosting and decide that with the number of pets they have between them, they stand a good chance of winning a prize for the most interesting pets and the best display. Deciding to create an act with a circus theme, they create costumes for some animals and decide that the dogs will pull wagons designed to look like circus cages. In the “cages” will be the animals that cannot walk on their own in the parade, such as the gophers and rats. In their desire to win, the boys head out to the prairie to capture more wood gophers to add to their menagerie. On the day of the parade, as Murray and Billy put the finishing touches on the cages and dress up the animals, Bruce arrives late with a shoebox under his arm, claiming that it is a surprise pet and warning the other boys not to open the box. They hitch the dogs up to the makeshift wagons and set off toward town. The wagons are unstable as the dogs are unused to walking in harness.

When they arrive at the start of the parade, the boys note the variety of pets that other children brought, which include horses, skunks, rabbits, geese, pigs, tadpoles, calves, and goats as well as a number of cats and dogs. After about an hour, the boys reach the front of the judges’ stand with confidence, having seen the other parade entries and knowing their own to be the best. The judges come down to inspect the boys’ pets and floats. Billy overhears the judges speaking positively about their presentation, when one of the judges suddenly notices Bruce’s “surprise pet” in the shoebox. Everyone crowds around, and Bruce unties the shoebox and lifts the lid, revealing a rattlesnake. Everyone starts running to escape the rattlesnake, and the skunk gets upset and sprays everyone. To make matters worse, the children’s animals all start to run wild. The boys’ two cages get upended, causing gophers to get squashed and rats to get loose. Chaos surrounds them. They manage to gather up their wagons, their two dogs, the owls, and the snake before heading home. Later, Bruce tells Billy and Murray that the snake is the pet of his hired man and besides being over 15 years old, doesn’t have any teeth or any poison.

Chapter 7 Summary

Billy’s dog, Mutt, does not like the owls, especially Wol, but he does tolerate Weeps, whom he snuggles with and protects from neighborhood dogs and cats. Wol, on the other hand, pesters Mutt by stealing his bones and food. He also stalks Mutt when the dog is asleep in the yard, grabbing his tail and squeezing it before flying off into the trees. These acts of mischief are the only harm he does to the animals around him unless the need to protect himself arises. According to Billy, he is not “the fierce and bloodthirsty kind of bird that owls are supposed to be” (56), for he never chases rabbits or gophers, but he does chase skunks. Because Billy’s house is close to the river where the skunks live, they can often be found wandering through his neighborhood.

One summer evening, Wol spots a skunk walking down the street and catches it and kills it, but not before the skunk sprays both himself and Wol. Wol then appears in Billy’s dining room window holding the dead, smelly skunk while Billy and his parents are eating dinner, filling the room with the heavy smell. Wol lets out a hoot, which Billy interprets as a request to join the humans at the dinner table. They all run from the room and avoid it for the next two weeks, and they avoid Wol as well. Billy believes that Wol, unhappy at being alone, thinks everyone is mad at him because he did not share his skunk, so he goes to the riverbank to catch another one. This time, he comes back smelling so bad that the neighbors complain, and Billy and his father give Wol a bath in tomato juice to try and eradicate the stench from his feathers. After that, Wol never brings a skunk home again.

Chapter 8 Summary

Billy, Bruce, and Murray have set up their summer headquarters in a cave on the banks of the river. The cave is supported with logs, has a door made of tin-roofing, and sports a smokestack going up through the ceiling. The boys add hay for carpeting and use crates and an old bench for comfort. They visit the cave a few times a week, bringing the owls and their dogs and hiding their bikes so none of the “pretty tough kids” (61) in Saskatoon will find them or invade the cave. Wol usually stays close to the cave to avoid the crows, and Weeps stays in the cave where he knows himself to be safe. One day, the boys decide to go swimming, resting on a sandbar in the middle of the river. Instead of watching from the giant cottonwood tree that overhangs the river as he usually does, Wol decides to wade into the water. He quickly learns he cannot walk across the water, and the boys end up having to fish him out. Wol is upset, and after his feathers dry, he heads home on his own.

In the middle of the summer, Bruce and Billy get permission to spend the night in the cave. They bring the owls and dogs with them. On a hike, Mutt chases out a nesting prairie chicken whose eggs are in the middle of hatching. The boys decide to stay and watch them all hatch, after which the babies see Wol and try to nest under him. The boys think this is quite funny, but they suspect that Wol is uncomfortable and unsure what to do. Worried that the babies’ mother will not return, the boys pick up Wol and decide to head back to the cave. After dinner, the boys head to the riverbank to look for a coyote and watch the sunset. Wol takes up his spot on the big cottonwood tree. While sitting there, the boys hear loud noises, and two tough kids from Saskatoon appear. They come over to Billy and Bruce and grab Bruce’s arm, twisting it behind his back. The other bully trips Billy and sits on him. The two boys want to know where the cave is and threaten to tie Billy and Bruce to the tree, where the ghost of a local legend can get them. At that moment, a coyote howls and Wol, in response, soars from the tree and lets out a shriek. Because Wol’s feathers are white, his resemblance to a ghost frightens the two bullies away.

Chapters 5-8 Analysis

Mowat uses descriptive imagery to convey Billy’s deep connection to the landscape beyond the school walls and articulate the boy’s longing to immerse himself in this world. Mowat describes the river as “boiling over the sand bars” while ducks “[are] flying free across the wide prairie” (35). Thus, Billy’s dramatic perceptions of the natural world highlight his connection to it and his love for the freedom it represents, a connection that becomes all the more distracting when he is confined within the walls of the school building. When Billy is finally free to become a part of the wild landscape he covets, Mowat shifts the novel’s descriptions accordingly to become even more sensual, emphasizing the boy’s satisfaction at finally being where he wants to be. Thus, he describes the river in terms of what games Billy and his friends can enjoy there, evoking the tactile experience of the river mud: “Nice and soft and slithery, [the river silt] packed into mushy mud-balls that made a wonderful splash” (62). The use of sensory words reveals Billy’s intimate relationship with the sandbar as a much-loved place in which he spends quality time throughout his childhood.

Additionally, Mowat employs extensive use of a variety of figurative language to convey Billy’s close connection to nature, using metaphors and similes to excellent effect. For example, he states that “the bank of the river was a regular jungle of bushes and poplar trees” (57), further romanticizing Billy’s perception of the flora and fauna by invoking lush and exotic imagery of far-off jungle realms, lending the everyday locale of the river a more adventurous connotation.

In addition to fostering his more general connection to the natural world, Billy’s tendency to personify Wol and Weeps only intensifies as the owls grow and start to learn more about the world. For example, Billy attributes Weeps’ lack of flying and independence to his timid spirit, asserting that “Weeps’ spirit must have been broken in the oil drum, because as long as I knew him he was always afraid of doing things” (36). Thus, Weeps is assumed to possess the ability to feel and reason beyond just the instinctual need to survive. However, with this speculation, Billy also fails to note that Weeps’ inability to develop independence is more likely the result of his separation from his mother at such a young age. Because Weeps never learned the necessary survival skills from his parents, he is unable to survive on his own. Despite this more logical explanation, Billy clings to his own perceptions, asserting, “Weeps didn’t believe he could fly, and that was that” (39).

Throughout the novel, Wol is similarly personified. Billy believes that the humiliation of being laughed at becomes the owl’s motivation for learning to fly properly. In Billy’s mind, anger at being ridiculed for a fall drives the owl to improve, thus creating an opportunity to learn this necessary skill. However, as with his explanation for Weeps’ timidity, the arbitrary connection that Billy makes between Wol’s emotional response and his sudden flight fails to consider Wol’s instincts as a key factor in the equation. Even Billy’s father is susceptible to this logical fallacy, for he notes, “I don’t believe that owl realizes that he’s an owl. I believe he thinks he’s a human being” (39). This ability to reason is also attributed to Wol when he gets sprayed by the skunk a second time. Billy feels that Wol hunts another skunk because he believes that everyone is angry at him for not failing to share his original catch. By becoming a receptacle for the family’s constant personifications, Wol becomes an animal that humans can relate to because he is perceived to think and act just like they do. The assigning of human psychology to the animals emphasizes Mowat’s intentional blending of natural science and fictional invention.

In a notable exception to this tendency to anthropomorphize his owl, however, Billy also understands that Wol’s acts of killing the cat and hurting the neighborhood dog are instinctual, rather than being evidence of conscious malice or wrongdoing. In fact, Billy presents these occurrences as natural animal behaviors and shows a degree of indifference to the consequences of the owl’s natural ferocity, knowing that Wol needs to protect himself. Accordingly, Billy’s descriptions of these actions show no regret or grief, reflecting instead a matter-of-fact understanding in the order of the natural world. As the boy’s narration explains, “It seems that all horned owls just naturally hate skunks, though no one knows the reason why” (57). Thus, Billy both recognizes that Wol is a wild animal that often acts on instinct while still irrationally attributing great emotion and reasoning skills to the owl.