owls (stuttering)

Owls often make it difficult to speak Cree with them. They can cause stuttering, and when stuttering is going on they are attracted to it. It is said that stuttering is laughable to owls. Yet this can work to the Cree’s advantage as well, for if you think an owl is causing trouble in your village, then go stutter in the woods. There’s a good chance an owl will arrive. Then you can confront this owl, question it, argue with it, perhaps solve the problem. (88)

Quoted in The Spell of the Sensuous, Abram
From Harry Norman, “Crow Ducks and Other Wandering Talk,”
in David M. Guss, ed., The Language of the Birds

PS. I wrote a poem about stuttering once that had a pigeon in it. I never understood the connection, but it seemed to be okay and I never changed the poem. Maybe as owls, so pigeons.