02/06/2026
Whatever happened to the roosters? The morning doves? The owls?
When I was a kid, I would regularly spend the night at my grandmother‘s house in Spencer. Now Spencer wasn’t exactly the sticks, but it was much more rural than the rest of Oklahoma City. The lot sizes were 5 to 10 times the size of today’s lots. I remember my granddad had built a rather large farm in the back portion of his property, growing nearly everything he and my grandmother needed to survive.
One of the things I remember and very much miss, was being woken up every morning by the neighbor’s rooster. Now, I was a kid who loved to sleep in. Even as an adult, if I get the chance to sleep in, you are not getting me out of bed. But even though that rooster woke me up every morning at 6 AM, I would always lay there for a little bit and listen to it crow before falling back to sleep. It was a comforting sound.
At home in the city, I remember occasionally waking up to the sound of morning doves outside my window. It was a similar feeling, but something I didn’t realize I would end up taking for granted. I don’t remember the last time I heard a rooster. I don’t remember the last time I heard any morning doves. Things are different now, and now that I’m old enough to recognize the missing pieces, I have to say I’m starting to miss them.
This morning as I opened my garage, I heard a sound I haven’t heard in a long time. An owl. I stood there in the opening staring out into the darkness, wondering if I had been hearing things. Hoping that I would hear it again. And that’s when darkened silhouette of my neighbor’s house across the street from me shifted.
It might be hard to see, but sitting atop the cylindrical smoke stack on my neighbor’s roof is a single owl. I stood there for a few minutes, manufacturing my best version of a hoot, talking to the creature I could barely see before I hopped in my car and headed off to work. It was a small thing, but it made me realize how much I missed it. What parts of your childhood do you regret not getting to experience anymore?