When Tomaso’s beloved Aunt Hilda was dying, we went to see her about an hour’s drive from our home. On the way, something hit the windshield. Tomaso pulled over, when he heard a voice in his mind so: “Pull over -it’s an Owl.”

Long story short, we took the Owl home and nursed her back to health. We named her Persephone.

Hilda’s life was prolonged by six months. Her son asked the doctors to keep her alive via life-support. That’s what they did.

Meanwhile, Persephone took her place in our barn. Tomaso was God struck by the charismatic soul. He bought live mice and one by one brought them to Persephone in the barn. Persephone swept in, grabbed his belt with her talons, and quick like lightning, liberated the mouse from his pocket. Needless to say, we had an aquarium full of live mice in our living room.

Then each time, before she devoured the mouse, she rested on a barn beam and looked hard and long at Tomaso, as if to say, “thank you.“

That Christmas, we had a house full of guests. One by one, we took them to the barn to demonstrate the charismatic nature of the Owl who was more than willing to perform for the small gatherings.

The people who were at that Christmas celebration never forgot it.

One day we got the call that life-support was going to be removed from Aunt Hilda. Tomaso immediately went to be with her when she died.

I went to the barn to feed Persephone a mouse, but she was not in her usual perch.

Instead, she was busy digging a hole in the corner of the barn.

A little later, I got the call of Hilda’s passing. Something told me to go back to the barn. Persephone had buried her self alive in the hole I witnessed her digging earlier.

I am not one to consult psychics but in this case, we did. She said Hilda, who had helped raise Tomaso, desired to keep in touch with him the way of the natural world. She was an animal lover as was Tomaso, and on a psychic, unconscious realm, she kept him in heart.

The thread keeping her in touch with Tomaso was no longer needed.

Persephone and Aunt Hilda flew to the great beyond together. OM