An owl calls, then comes the pulsating thrum of a nightjar, plus all the insects and the unidentifiable rustlings of the leaf litter.
Asked about his fondness for the word — he pronounces it "hoo-dlum," lingering on the first syllable, almost as if mimicking an owl call — Mr. Catsimatidis seemed to draw a blank, and eventually settled on his upbringing as the likely culprit.
This is a story for younger readers, about a baby barn owl called Plop (and have you, incidentally, ever come across a more perfectly appropriate name for a character? What else could a fat and fluffy baby owl with "a beautiful heart-shaped ruff... enormous, round eyes... and very knackety knees" possibly be called?) who suffers from the eponymous affliction.
Brain focuses on a particular profile of OWL, called EL, which consists of a subset of the constructs available in the original language (Motik et al., 2009).
In light of the above suggestion on the continuity between normal and defensive behavior, it is probable that spiny mice perceived playback of recorded owl calls as a threat, as indicated by the increased corticosteroid level.
The owl calls mid afternoon, the fox makes an appearance, the day gets darker and colder.
Nonetheless, in both spiny mice and voles, owl calls induced increase in corticosteroids, which is a reliable indicator of stress, with higher levels recorded in voles that responded by freezing compared with those that fled [ 1].
Freeze and flee also characterized the response of social (Gunther's) voles (Microtus socialis guntherei) to playback of recorded owl calls [ 1, 27]: some voles decreased activity and hid in an accessible shelter or corner (freezing) whereas other voles increased activity, running frenetically in the apparatus (fleeing).
Those nights, Nazneen lay awake listening to the rattling of the corrugated tin roof, starting at the owl calls that no longer sounded like owls but more like a girl felled by an axe on the back of her neck.
Once gone, only distant owl calls interrupt the sound of wind rushing through the treetops.
