Guardians of Ga'Hoole 04 - The Siege

nothing if they didn’t stop all the gleeking about. Gleeking was the owl word for messing around and not being serious. Some chaw leaders such as Strix Struma never permitted such gleeking, but Ezylrybwas different. He believed that gleeking was good, building trust and fellowship.
    Otulissa, however, a serious and proper young Spotted Owl, abhorred gleeking about in general, and wet poop jokes in particular. It was a never-ending debate between her and Soren.
    “Soren, I just don’t believe that exchanging wet poop jokes with seagulls should be part of any mission.”
    Otulissa and Soren, both members of the weather chaw, perched on a branch just outside the dining hollow waiting for Matron to announce that breaklight was ready. Breaklight was the meal the owls enjoyed at the end of the night, just before the break of dawn. After this, they would sleep for the rest of the daylight hours until the evening shadows began to creep over the earth and darken the sky.
    “You can learn a lot from seagulls, Otulissa,” Soren was saying.
    “I beg to differ. All that churring and guffawing and giggling over their pathetic humor interrupts the pressure-front vibrations.” Spotted Owls were known for their extreme sensitivities to atmospheric pressure that came with changes in the weather.
    “Well, you picked up on the fact that a blizzard was behindthis gale, and look, it’s starting to snow now. So I don’t see how it damaged your prediction.”
    “Soren, I could have predicted a lot more precisely when and how much snow we would be getting if there hadn’t been all that gleeking about. Also, I just don’t find wet poop jokes funny. As owls, we should be proud of our digestive system and our unique manner of eliminating waste.”
    “Oh, it’s yarping, for Glaux’s sake.” A large Great Gray Owl named Twilight had just lighted down onto the branch next to them. Twilight was one of Soren’s closest friends.
    “It’s not simply yarping, Twilight. That we pack the bones and fur of our waste into neat little packets for excretion is quite extraordinary in the bird kingdom. That so little of our waste is liquid is exceptional. Yarping pellets through our mouths is magnificent,” said Otulissa.
    “Seen one pellet, seen them all,” Twilight growled.
    “I’m getting cold,” Soren said. “When is breaklight going to be ready? I, for one, am ready for something hot.”
    Before a mission, the owls of the weather chaw were not permitted to eat their food cooked. Ezylryb insisted that they eat their food raw and with all the “hair”—as he called it—on the meat. Of course, the owls of theGa’Hoole Tree were special in that they often ate cooked food. Most owls ate their food raw and bloody because, unlike the owls of the great tree, they did not possess the extensive knowledge of fire. The owls of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree enjoyed a civilization unrivaled by any of the other kingdoms of owls. With their knowledge, they tried to protect the lives of owls in other kingdoms. Lately, however, the dangers had increased alarmingly. Not the least of these dangers were the evil owls of St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls where Soren had once been imprisoned. At St. Aggie’s, he had met his best friend Gylfie, an Elf Owl. And now there was an even more destructive group, the Pure Ones. It had been on the mission to rescue Ezylryb that Soren had discovered that his own brother, Kludd, was the leader of this group.
    Matron, a bunchy Barred Owl, poked her beak out of an opening near the branch where Soren and the others perched. “Breaklight!” she announced cheerfully.
    “At last!” Soren said.
    “Ooh, bats! I smell roasted bat wings!” Gylfie suddenly swooped in.
    “Where’ve you been?” Soren turned to the Elf Owl.
    “Helping Octavia in the library,” she replied.
    “Octavia in the library? Why?” Soren asked.
    “Orders from the top, I guess. We were supposed to organize all the books on higher magnetics and flecks.” Soren felt his gizzard lurch. He would never get used to hearing the word “flecks.”
    “But Octavia? Why Octavia? What use is a blind snake in the library? No offense, Mrs. P.,” Otulissa asked as they crowded around Mrs. Plithiver, another blind snake.
    “None taken, dear,” the rosy-colored snake replied.
    For centuries, blind snakes had served as maids in the nests of owls, keeping them free of vermin and pests. In the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, they served in other tasks as