Going Postal, or the Sketchy Memoirs ...

Going Postal, or, the Sketchy Memoirs of an Eye-Talon-Coordination-Deficient Owl
(A biographical exercise in biologically-incorrect anthropomorphy)

Pigwidgeon was quite the hapless owl. If his mother had not had to worry about the three other chicks in the same brood she would perhaps have done a better job at rearing him; although maybe there was nothing to be done. Owls these days, they always left the nest as soon as possible, eager to stretch their wings and hunt their own mice, as if there was something wrong with being fed regurgitated pellets by their parents. While maybe there was something to be said for the feel of ribcages swallowed whole and still warm, without a slimy coating of bile to ease their journey into the first stomach, the fact remained that Pig had left the nest entirely too soon to survive in the big bad world of Wizarding Post, an occupation that had run in the family for a myriad of generations but for which he was as ill-suited as he was adamant about joining.

Indeed, Pigwidgeon was clearly not the cleverest (that fell to his elder brood-sister, first of the clutch to hatch), nor the speediest (eldest brother, two clutches back) nor even the prettiest (youngest sister, last year’s clutch; she had tail feathers that were simply fantastic, and many an aspiring mate had failed to capture mice when beholding the most delicious curve of her beak). If he had any talent or skill or simply remarkable characteristic to append to his name, it was that of being the most gullible of the family, and also the tiniest. A scatterbrain of sorts, natural selection’s latest failure, or so it was rumored ruthlessly in the grapevine.

And so, everywhere he tried, Pig (not that he was called Pig, or anything as ridiculously human at that, at the time, but it is a useful label for our purposes nonetheless) found himself snubbed by the fine owls of the Wizarding Mail system. They would blink at him from their perches whenever he enquired about helping deliver mail, large and majestic and in a no non-sense series of hoots and clicks tell him that he was ridiculously small, or had a most lamentable flight technique, or simply glared until he withered under their gaze and flittered away, dejected and alone and tiny, veering madly in the air.

The ones in the Hogwarts Owlery had been particularly ruthless; he’d heard stories, before fledging, of the tallest tower in the castle, filled with light and perches and more mice than anyone could want; it was every owl’s dream to some day soar through the narrow slits of the room and, after drinking some water, join the rest of birds there, patiently waiting for the hordes of pupils who dutifully wrote home on a daily basis to report the latest news and gossip from the hallowed school.

Reality was much harsher, of course, and anyone who so much as dared approach the Owlery in the hopes of spending the night there would be met by three, large, dark barn owls, self appointed mobsters and headmen of the place who kept everything under a tight leash. Nothing came in and nothing went out without their approval, and the time he’d tried to flutter in and shelter himself from an impending storm, Pigwidgeon had been meet with three sharp pairs of talons and three equally unfriendly beaks. His only consolation was that in his insistence he’d been deemed aggravating enough to warrant the attention of all three birds, an accomplishment not everyone he knew could equal.

That night, perched alone and cold in one of the trees of the Forbidden Forest as it stormed hail and water all around him had been one of the most miserable of his brief life. But it did nothing to dampen his resolve, to lessen his drive, to squelch his dreams like bigger owls squelched tiny field mice in their powerful sharp claws. Before he died, he would work for the Wizarding Mail, and no owl, no eagle or barn owl, would stop him. Poor navigator, yes; strong-headed, also yes. Pigwidgeon would let nothing hold him back, would let nothing keep him from fulfilling his dream.

The next morning, when the sun rose over the castle and dusted the forest with golden rays of warm light, Pig shook himself dislodging the last droplets of water from his plumage and did a few experimental dives, all of which had appallingly disastrous results. Perhaps they were right, all those owls, perhaps he did fly worse than that owl Archimedes had done in that animated movie about swords and stones (oh, he was a shame to the species, the real owl who’s inspired such travesty), and for the first time in his life, doubt trickled into his mind, coldly spreading from the tip of his wings to the sharp point of his claws, as he hooted dejectedly.

Maybe he should go somewhere. Get out of the country; see how other owls flew outside England. Perhaps they’d prove less uptight and more willing to impart knowledge, be less reticent to help Pig achieve his dreams. Perhaps. It seemed like a good idea, anyhow, and so he waited winter out under the leafless branches, and set off in early spring, beginning his long, fluttery flight south in the road to warmer climes and perhaps, hopefully, enlightenment.

It was in a forest in Wales where he finally learned to keep his balance in flight when carrying something in his talons (he practiced using a stick); it was near the large cities of the south of England that for once and for all he mastered hunting at night; it was from an old Venezuelan parrot living in suburbia, long ago smuggled into the country, that he learned the Muggle words for Wizarding Post and it was somewhere near the western shores of the isle, flying underneath the thick eaves of the forest a few days before summer, that he stumbled upon a haggard man scribbling frantically on parchment.

Amidst his hoots, in his surprise, Pigwidgeon did not remember wise advice given to him long ago about always looking both ways before diving, nor did he see the thick tree branch quickly approaching on his right side, but instead crashed into it, unceremoniously dropping to the ground and losing a wing-full of feathers in the process.

Coming to sometime later, a translucent, gelatinous and squirmy thing caught his attention, crawling as it was around the forest floor. It was stripped, yellow and green and the occasional band of orange in no pattern Pig had ever seen, but despite this it moved like all worms did, sinuously -- almost seductively, as far as Pigwidgeon was concerned. There was a rule somewhere about red and yellow stripes touching, he recalled hazily from his days as a nestling, but hunger was hunger and a worm was a worm and he was an owl and not scared.

Maybe it was his slow reflexes acting up again (they’d proven rather problematic a few times before, and wasn’t this the right time for that lag between his eyes and his talons to flare up again?), maybe it was some sort of lingering trauma from having just plummeted down, but the truth was that none of his seven attempts at capturing the animal proved successful. Every time he was absolutely sure it was lying within his talons, soft flesh wounded and pierced by Pig’s sharp claws he’d look down only to find them empty, the worm slithering away unfazed, unaware of this latest brush with sudden gory death.

Had he succeeded in catching it, he would have found it sadly lacking in nutritional content of any sort, as in truth it was one of Honeydukes’ creations, a new spin on the old children’s favorite, the Crawling Gummy Worm, but, chased off the town as he’d been by the owls in the post office there, Pig had had no opportunity to acquaint himself with the store’s fine wares and thus was adamant about capturing and consuming it.

But this never happened. Because, on the eight trial, when he was positively sure he’d finally caught the squirmy little thing Pig felt rough fingers close about him abruptly, he felt his wings pressed against his body and he felt his thin ribs threatening to crack under the pressure, even as he was plucked off the ground and brought face to face with the man he’d seen before, the one who’d been writing on parchment with a quill and must therefore be a wizard.

And then, as he rudely held Pigwidgeon in one, grubby, too-tight hand, the man spoke the magic words.

“D’you think you could deliver a letter for me?”