Owls in the Family

At this point in the story, Weeps and Wol have gone from just being pets officially becoming “owls in the family.” Mowat reveals the true degree of this development in the final chapters when the owls are finally permitted to move freely between living outside and coming inside the home for companionship, much like Mutt does. Even Billy’s mother starts to appreciate having the company of the owls as she bakes. Additionally, the owls come on family vacations each year, rather than remaining home as Billy’s other pets do. Like Mutt, they ride in the rumble seat. At the close of the book, when Billy is forced to give Wol and Weeps to someone else, he knows he cannot just release them back into the wild even though they are technically wild animals. Yet, in accordance with his earlier personification of the owls’ inner motivations and overt actions, he does not demonstrate an objective understanding that his owls, having been raised by humans, do not have the skills necessary to survive in the wild. Instead, he is determined to find them a new home simply because they are members of his family and deserve such consideration.

If anything, this section of the book demonstrates the ways in which the entire family personifies the owls, and indeed, the birds’ behavior develops significantly throughout their adventures in these chapters and strengthens the dominant image of them both as young children who are steadily acquiring new skills. For example, Weeps, who had previously been timid and described as “always afraid of doing things” (36) now steps up to explore on the canoe with Billy, Bruce, and Billy’s father without having Wol there first. Such initiative proves that Weeps is no longer as broken as he once was, and he is no longer always afraid of doing new things. Wol, too, has a moment with Billy that is seemingly out of character for him. Although Wol is typically described as somewhat aggressive, protective, and quick to anger, at the close of the book, when he senses that something is wrong, he puts his head to the door to let Billy scratch him, arguably displaying an intuitive sensitivity to emotion far beyond the capabilities of an ordinary owl. While Wol does like to be with Billy in general and takes care to ride on his shoulders without hurting him, this is the first and only gentle and tender interaction between the two characters that Billy describes in the narrative.

In accordance with the novel’s other major theme—the destructive element of humanity—the final chapters contain one of the clearest scenes of humanity’s disregard for the natural world when Billy’s father, upset at the crows for causing the canoe to flip, takes his shotgun and tries to slaughter as many crows as possible in retribution. His father goes after any crow in order to “even up the score” (83), an irrational impulse that mirrors the boys’ retribution against the scolding crows in the book’s first few chapters and implying that such behavior is learned rather than innate to all humans. Yet, the crows only attacked Wol on instinct and were not acting in a vengeful manner; thus, the decision of Billy’s father to take their actions personally and ascribe negative connotations to their behavior demonstrates once again the darker pitfalls of anthropomorphizing animal behavior.