The Wise Owl of Ste. Agathe

Why the Animals Never Learned to Count

The Laurentian woods, as everybody knows, are full of animals. There are moose and bear and deer and hare and mink and lots and lots of different birds.

Just like normal human society, the animals each have a specialty. Some are browsers, some are grazers, some are diggers, some builders and some, or at least one, is a teacher. The teacher of course, and luckily for all the other animals, is the wise old owl. This is the story about how the wise old owl taught all the other animals how to count.

It all began in a thicket in the woods just outside one small Laurentian village the name of which the animals never learned how to pronounce, and in full sight of the windows of several woodland cottages.

Laurentian cottages generally point at something so that it would be correct to say that these chalets pointed at the thicket. Laurentian humans can spend endless hours arguing about this since the front and back of a house often depends more on who is talking and where the road is than on the direction the house points. In any case, the animals know that the front of the house is the direction it looks in, and these houses happened to look in the direction of the thicket.

Late one autumn, actually it was around this time of year, Owl came flying over the tops of these several cottages on his way to the thicket to give a lesson. It was an evening course and he was still a little stuck for an inspiration that would really capture the attention of all his various students. Below him, he heard the prettiest singing coming from one of the houses, so he landed on a neighbouring fence and looked for its source.

He didn’t have to look long, for there inside one of the windows was a family singing as they lit two candles in a candelabra or menorah. “TWO!” cried Owl. “TWO! What a concept! TWO!” he cried again. “Wonderful! I’ll teach them ‘Two’!” And in great excitement he flew further into the thicket as the two lighted candles shone brightly through the window behind him.

Meanwhile, inside the house, the candles burned on the windowsill and Lisa and Jesse, the children who had lighted them, finished their songs of Hanukkah remembering that tomorrow they could light three candles. Lighting the higher one first, the Shamash, they would take it and carefully light the other two, and each night thereafter they would light one more candle until eight candles were burning below the Shamash.

“Class!” began Owl authoritatively from his perch on the lower branch of a large white pine, “Tonight I will teach you the concept of two! Two is a very important number in higher mathematics. It had its beginning at the beginning since there could not have been a beginning until there was another to witness the one that had begun!” A murmur of comprehension passed through the attentive animals, but the younger hares were already feeling sleepy and began looking for warm places to snuggle up. The young deer were sound asleep and so most of the hares could snuggle up against them. “Therefore I believe that it is only logical to conclude that TWO is the REAL beginning of all numbers” continued Owl, “and it is necessary to grasp the concept of TWO if you wish to have any hope of understanding the philosophy of higher mathematics.” Some of the adult animals’ ears were beginning to fold over by this point and no one even noticed that the skunks had snuggled in next to the bear. “The Humans can be a great help to us in this matter, for, even though it is doubtful that they understand the power of the concept, they sing around two lights at the window of one of the cottages across from the thicket.” “Ooh” some of the animals cried in wonder, (though it may have been the moose snoring). “Now over the next week, as your assignment, you must each go in your turn to the edge of the thicket in the evening and witness for yourselves this wonderful concept of TWO. You will see it shining through the window of a house on the east side of the thicket.”

So all the animals woke up and agreed to do their homework and Owl said he would return next week to see if they had learned anything.

The next night the wolves crept stealthily to the edge of the thicket and watched as Jesse and Lisa sang and returned the Shamash to its place above the other two candles, and three little lights shone into the night and into the attentive eyes of the wolves. “TWO!” the wolves howled to each other. “TWOOO! TWOOO!’ they continued to howl as they returned to the woods. “TWO!” what an interesting concept!” they congratulated each other. “What an easy lesson.”

The third night the moose stuck their heads out through the branches towards the house on the east end of the thicket and watched as four lights shone through the window. “Intriguing! TWO!’ they muttered contentedly to each other. “TWO!” They repeated as they retraced their steps through the woods. “Now we know TWO! What a wise teacher we have.”

The following night, if Lisa and Jesse had known, the thicket was full of squirrels and chipmunks all nattering as they witnessed the wonderful concept of TWO that Owl had told them about. Five candles burned brightly in the menorah. ‘Two!” ‘Two!’ “Two!” they nattered knowledgeably as they scampered back into the woods.

When the chickadees landed on the highest branches the next night they had, typically, lost their sense of direction. Chickadees, as you probably know, can’t tell east from west and that is why they do not migrate south for the winter. But never mind because Mark, Lisa and Jesse’s neighbour on the other side of the thicket, had just finished turning on his Christmas tree and the chickadees chirped contentedly as the dozens of coloured lights shone through his window towards them. “Two!” they cried in delight as they flew off back into the forest and the six lights of the menorah shone, five plus the Shamash.

The groundhogs, the historians of the forest, knew which direction to look in, and they learned the concept of TWO the next night as seven dazzling candles cut through the darkness and into their sharp eyes. “TWO-TWO-TWO” they repeated as they burrowed back under the ground.

The night that the deer came out to look it was snowing gently and if you had been able to look at the reflections in their big eyes, you would have seen eight candles shining in some cottages and many Christmas lights shining in others. The silly deer had got their directions from the chickadees and they couldn’t agree which direction they should look in.

Poor Owl. I don’t have to tell you how many lights shone for the hares the next night. “I never thought TWO would be so many!” they commented to each other as they hopped into the thicket for their lesson. “Wow! The beginning of everything was very complicated!” they all happily concluded.

“Well?” asked Owl. “Have you all understood the concept of TWO?”

“Yes, yes,’ cried the animals, “Easy. Easy stuff.”

“Good then, perhaps you wouldn’t mind scratching TWO in the snow in front of you and I’ll come around and check.”

A frenzy of scratching ensued, especially around the chickadees who claimed they needed more space, and the hares who pawed up all the snow under the moose.

“No no! TWO! TWO! I said TWO!” screamed Owl as he examined each of their lessons. “Can’t you understand the simplest concept TWO! TWO! TWO!” All the animals stared in wonder at wise Owl. What had they missed? They flattened the snow and began again.

Across the thicket Lisa said to her big brother “What’s that noise?”

“It’s just an owl,” her brother answered knowingly.

As she closed their door behind them Lisa exclaimed with excitement “Mom! Mom! We heard an owl counting ‘Two!’”

“The owl wasn’t saying Two, silly,” said her brother. “He was saying WHO! WHO! That’s what owls say! Everybody knows that owls can’t count!”

Illustrated by Stuart Graham