The nocturnal birds that we know as owls have been for centuries considered to be wise animals. The bird’s deep, soulful eyes and the mortar boards that they occasionally wear have earned them a reputation for being anything but “bird-brained”. It is this reputation that earned them their nickname “Regurgitrons”.

Today, however, I will be taking a look beyond this facade we’ve come to accept. I, Patrick D Ryall, will be looking at Owls: Beyond the Wisdom!

Owls (Owlus Stupidi) are nocturnal animals meaning that they are creatures of the night. As such, owls do not have reflections or shadows and are killed by sunlight. Other ways to kill owls include a stake driven through the beast’s heart, decapitation, fire, and shotguns. Garlic and religious items such as crosses or holy water are also effective deterrents.

Owls feed on the blood of the living by biting a living thing’s neck and sucking the blood from the wound. They then proceed to rotate their heads around 360 degrees.

Owls live in trees, and as such are the natural enemies of monkeys. It is not uncommon in the southern areas of the United States to see a swarm of owls attacking a monkey that has wandered onto an owl tree. When a monkey is alone, it is doomed to a horrible demise, but owls will typically flee from a group of monkeys larger than three in number. A smaller number of monkeys however will no doubt be slaughtered, leaving the owls feasting on the remains and rotating their heads 360 degrees in triumph.

Monkeys are dumber than owls, and as such have to resort to brute force to combat their winged enemies. It is not uncommon for monkeys to throw coconuts at owls that occupy a tree that they want to climb on. Because of this, owls have developed an eerie “coconut sense” that warns them of incoming coconuts. Scientists have yet to fully understand how this sense works and indeed, some doubt it actually exists.

But owls and monkeys were not always at odds. Owls, like all birds, are descended from dinosaurs and thus showed up long before monkeys existed. Fossils place the first owls in the Jurassic Era, and seem to suggest that at this time the owls’ natural enemy was the Triceratops. Many unearthed Triceratops skeletons have been found to have owls impaled on their horn. But the Triceratops were merely protecting themselves, because owls would often fly into the throats of larger dinosaurs and choke them to death. They found this funny.

There are various breeds of owls, such as Snowy Owls, Barn Owls, Spotted Owls, Albino Owls, Kangaroo Owls, Endangered Owls, Skwermusfer Owls, and Butterfly Owls. There is no actual difference between any of these types of owls, except the name. In fact, evidence exists that there are only nineteen owls worldwide and they fly from country to country changing their colors. They hang out in one country long enough for people to notice them, then fly off to another one in which they would rotate their head 360 degrees around.

Patrick D Ryall, the D is for Lava
Originally posted on Contains2 on Thursday 27 March 2003

In the dream I had in my most recent sleep I was pulled over by the police after riding a motorcycle on the beach at night after it had snowed. I have never in my life ridden a motorcycle, but it seemed easy enough in my dream. I was able to ramp off beach-snow with ease. And also the bike didn’t make as much noise as they do in real life. I’d love a dream-motorcycle.

The dream cops let me go as soon as they realized I wasn’t drunk. In fact, one of them recognized me as a teetotaler, which was nice. I’ve always hoped that eventually the cops in the real world would get to recognize me in my night-wanderings and instead of being suspicious, they’d just say “Oh, there’s PDR. That guy is alright.” That would be nice. Anyway, it occurred to me after waking up that I didn’t even get in trouble for not wearing a helmet.

All in all, it was an okay dream.

All I have this week is Phone Guys.

And Marq went the extra mile and gave us another comic about ants telling jokes: