Tag Archives: Christmas

“Oh, I beg your pardon. I didn’t know this burrow was occupied!” Eustace blinked in sleepy amazement at the long nose and ears in front of him. When he realized it was a dachshund, and furthermore, that this dachshund was not only not biting the scruff of his neck and dragging him out of theContinue reading “Advent Calendar Story (Owl in Winter): Day Eight”

Abigail perched all that night in the ancient, craggy Scots Pine in the village square watching the dull light in Violet’s cottage window while Armand hunted and brought her food. The tree was beautiful, but sitting in it while Abigail gulped down her mice made Armand’s feathers stand on end as if lightning were inContinue reading “Advent Calendar Story (Owl in Winter): Day Seven”

Armand hadn’t directly told Elsie any of what he had learned about the train from Hamish the bull, but she must have overheard him telling Abigail because when the owls awoke at sunset, the squirrel was gone from their nest, and Eustace the badger said he’d seen her heading across the open field toward theContinue reading “Advent Calendar Story (Owl in Winter): Day Six”

When Armand and Abigail made it back to their tree at dawn, Armand poked his head into their nest. Elsie’s little red head popped up from the circle of her tail, her tassled ears bobbing comically. Armand chuckled in spite of his exhaustion and the night’s tensions. “What happened?” Elsie chirped. “What did you findContinue reading “Advent Calendar Story (Owl in Winter): Day Five”

The owls had spoken too soon because when they finally flew back to their wood, their bellies not as full as they would like but full enough all considering, they heard a fair ruckus of snarling and yelping and spitting and found Eustace the Badger squared off against two foxes at the mouth of theContinue reading “Advent Calendar Story (Owl in Winter): Day Four”

“Come, I’ll show you,” said Abigail to Armand over her wing, then she veered off toward the place where she had seen the men digging what looked like a road but what Gustav had called “the train.” When the ram had made the word, it clanked like a cowbell or a shovel hitting a stoneContinue reading “Advent Calendar Story (Owl in Winter): Day Three”

When the men had limbed their haul of timber and lumped it into pyramids on their sledges and dragged it creaking over the snow back to the village, when the sun had broken and run on the horizon like a watery egg, when the night had bled in enough from the east that you couldContinue reading “Advent Calendar Story (Owl in Winter): Day Two”