The screech owl and the banshee

    With night the shade of trepidation is drawn,,,, given the ape in our genes. Add to that our urban dislocation from life in the forest when we as a species were more familiar and haunted with things that go bump in the night. City dwellers, on the other hand, combat fear by just finding a crowd of which there are plenty. Forest dwellers, even though more familiar with the comings and goings of nocturnal creatures, are often couched in fear during many a sleepless night.There was little comforting deep sleep, vigilance doing battlle with relaxation.      
     I am reminded of an incident years ago,,,,,, in the heart of the wood,,, when a sound found me in my bed and shook me. This was a time when my mind was still between the city where I was born and the forest, where I then lived, a wet behind the ears nouveau cave man, still festooned with urban bangles. In 1973, my third year in Maine, one geodesic night  in the woods, asleep in my bed, a treble echoing sound eviscerated my dreams that was high pitched like a girl screaming. It seemed to change directions as it pierced the night. At one point I joked to myself that it was bigfoot. It sounded at first like sonar,,,you know the sound from one of those submarine movies, like Run Silent Run Deep where everyone is sweating the beeps,, and tensely waiting in silence for the next depth charge. After a moment the sound increased in volume to the scream of a banshee. Still half asleep I fuzzily thought for a moment that my mother had died and this was her spiritual farewell speech to me. No it couldn't be, because she would have accompanied the screams with gross put-downs,,,each repeated three times as is the rule for Italian-American mothers. You two eyed four eyed cock-eyed son of a bitch,,,,,you two eyed four eyed cock eyed son of a bitch,,,,you two.............and then she would alter the phrase but maintain the rythymn and biting theme. 
   No it wasn't mom, it was an animal, I thought,, but I had no idea what it could be. It frightened me. You see the awesome silences I encountered in Maine when I first arrived, devoid of buses and noisy cars unerved me,,,,,this piercing screech however was other worldly,, strange for its unfamiliarity.  Here I was in Maine, originally from New Jersey,  where the only wild life was occaisional possums in the garbage can and the ants that emerged from the cracks of the cement walk that my mother liked to scald with boiling water. 
     The next day,, after some inquiry I was told by some locals that it was a screech owl,, a  35,000 watt tweeter,, whose sound seems to emanate from everywhere. Otus asio is small, only 10 inches high with a 20-inch wingspan. Adults are dark brown or gray with small ear-tufts. This species is a permanent resident in most of southern Maine. Could this pidgeon sized bird have been responsible? 
     I had no rebuttal to my neighbors after all they were residents. I amused myself with the question of why emit such a sharp sound that pierced the cloak of night like a slashing broadsword. I theorized why a screech owl screeches. It is to instill fear, to announce the "coming",,,,,but above all to create movement. The sound rustled the prey I thought. Owls can detect these slight stirrings. Since the sound seems at times to have no fixed origin it disorients even more.A rodent runs helter skelter and suddenly is trapped in the vise like talons of its eternal master.  
     All this took place in 1970 way before the internet. Just this year I revisited the sound in my diary and went to search for a duplicate on the web or for any one else who might have encountered such a phenomenon. Cornell University maintains a large catalogue of bird sounds. When I visited their page and listened to varied recordings of screech owls nothing came close to what I had heard. In fact a screech owl doesn't screech at all. It coos more than blares. However I did find a plethora of testamonials from those who had encountered similar sounds. The internet is garden of testamonials,,,,, then the weeding must begin. One fellow stood out because he described the sound so well. Unlike me he went out into the night several times upon hearing the noise and saw some foxes which he claimed were the source of the screech. Another testamonial was sure the sound came from a bobcat or lynx. Below are some recordings of these animals. The lynxes and the last one of a fox are very close to what I heard on those nights long ago. 

https://youtu.be/-YC1Odv-FrY        Bobcat

https://youtu.be/G4ewNJ77xT8       Lynx

https://youtu.be/CmLdgCczb_g        Fox

https://youtu.be/aodwqjvk-ak           Fox