Choosing My Spirit Animal

Recently, I was at a social gathering where the conversation turned to determining each attendee’s spirit animal. Now, this is a topic that I’d never spent much time, if any, considering in the past, and it immediately piqued my intellectual curiosity, by which I mean I instantly began to hope that somebody would end up being a duck-billed platypus. (Unfortunately, it never happened.)

When the focus turned to me, I sort of knew what was going to happen, and sure enough, it didn’t take long before I was dubbed a bald eagle.

I get it, I get it. A BALD eagle. Talk about your low-hanging fruit.

Now, I fully realize that I should be happy with the selection. After all, the bald eagle is synonymous with strength and courage, not to mention it’s a symbol of our country. However, it still seemed like an uninspired choice, and more importantly, it just didn’t feel like me.

A few days later, being a bald eagle was still on the back of my mind. (The back of my mind, for the record, has an awful lot of free time on its hands.) By then, I’d become convinced that I was something else. For one thing, I don’t like fish. For another, I’m not big on heights. Plus, I always clip my nails before they have a chance to turn into talons. And so, with the topic weighing heavily on my mind, I brought up the matter to a couple of good friends, and I mentioned to them that one of the suggestions before bald eagle had been owl.

Almost immediately, both of them agreed that I was much more an owl than I was a bald eagle. I asked them why, and the general consensus was that owls are deliberate and wise, which seemed to fit me pretty well. (Now, I must admit that I have a sneaking suspicion they were using “wise” and “old” interchangeably, but sometimes you just have to take what you can get.)

An owl. I liked it. It felt right. I mean, after all, who did the kid turn to in order to figure out how many licks it took to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? Why that fountain of knowledge himself, Mr. Owl!

The next day, on a whim, I decided to do some research on owls. (Hmm…now that I think about it, most of my mind has an awful lot of free time on its hands.) This was when I found the following:

“Are owls the smartest birds? According to trainers that work with them, not by a long shot. Parrots are easy to train and can have extensive vocabularies. Hawks can be taught to retrieve objects. Even pigeons are used in behavioral studies and can be conditioned to obtain a reward by carrying out certain actions. But most species of owls can't be trained to do even the most rudimentary tasks.”

Uh-oh. Maybe being a bald eagle wasn’t such a bad thing.

Reading on, I discovered that owls really aren’t wise at all. They just look wise. For one thing, they have large eyes, which helps them to appear intelligent. For another, since those eyes are located on the front of their faces, they have to turn their heads in order to see anything not right in front of them, which makes it look like they're wisely taking in all aspects of their surroundings, even if they're just trying to figure out where they dropped their car keys.

At first I was a bit disappointed. My spirit animal was a fraud! However, it soon dawned on me that I actually am kind of an owl. I mean, I’ve been in the workforce for over a decade now, with no clue as to what’s going on, and I’m quite certain I’ve made it this far only because I do my best to look like I know what’s going on. Here are a few of my owlish secrets:

1.) Always carry around a notepad. (Mine is usually filled with doodles, but nobody has to know that.)

2.) Whenever you’re away from your desk, stride meaningfully about, like you’re about to swoop in and put an end to some company-wide crisis. (Even if you’re only on your way to the vending machine.)

3.) Always squint like you’re thinking deeply about some ultra-important matter of high importance. (Even if you’re just trying to figure out where you dropped your car keys.)

And so, I eventually came to the conclusion that an owl was a pretty good fit for me after all. Case closed!

Except then I went and tempted fate by taking two quizzes on the internet that claim to determine one's spirit animal, and according to them I was:

1) A lion.
2) A buffalo.

The heck with it. I’m sticking with owl. I mean, hoo believes anything they read on the internet, anyway?