Owls

When we sold our first house, several days before we moved, there was an owl in the front tree. It was the first time I had seen (at least as an adult) an owl in the wild, and I remember thinking "why couldn't this have shown up when we lived here?"

Two weeks before we moved out of the House in the Woods, I heard owls outside our window, several nights in a row. Again, I thought, "why haven't they been around before? Why do owls show up when I'm leaving somewhere?"

Recently, my friend Adele found owls in her area of the world. While I didn't tell her my owl experience, I thought to myself, "well, owls to me always signify an end to something." Sure enough, several weeks later, she was on a plane to another country, even if all of her plans aren't quite worked out yet.

We heard owls in the yard last week Monday. We looked out back, and there were two enormous Great Horned Owls, one on the roof of the barn, and one, amazingly enough, just a couple of feet away on the roof of the house. They hooted around for a while, then eventually flew to the front yard, then disappeared.

I told Eric what I thought it meant. He told me I was jinxing things, but immediately turned on his computer and looked up our house.

Sure enough, it was listed "Under Contract- First Right of Refusal."

I'm not kidding, and I swear to you, we had no advance notice that this was coming. No calls, no recent second showing.

It took us several days to learn what was going on. As it turned out, the house did have an offer, but the buyers needed to sell their house first. They had until Feb 16 to do so, and then the proceedings would start on this house. This meant that we would likely be in the house until mid-March, so no big deal.

Last night, I got an email, late at night, that the buyers had gotten a cash offer for their home (good for them!) But...

We're moving in 13 days.

Hoot.
Hoot.