How a plastic owl became part of our Christmas traditions

It all started several years back, when Mike was seeding the lawn for winter grass and placed a plastic owl in the yard to scare off the birds. Our neighbors, the Ironsides who lived directly across the street came and took the owl and placed it in their yard. We saw it there, but pretended not to, a couple of days later we discovered the owl hanging from the tree in the front yard, with a noose around it's neck. We decided to mourn the owl's loss, created a headstone and a casket, placed the owl in it, and left it on the Ironside's door step. The owl, was shipped to us, via pseudo UPS. Hmm, we thought what can we do now? So, the Ironsides unwittingly provided us with the opportunity to place the owl inside on the Christmas presents they had us hide for them at our house. We even put a lovely Christmas wreath on its head. We went to visit my family in Thatcher for a few days and when we returned, the owl was perched atop our roof. It stayed there for a while, until Mike decided we'd better take it down before we got another notice from the Homeowner's association. For some reason after that, it just seemed like Christmas time was the best time to "owl" the neighbors. We hid it in various places in their yard, and discovered it adorned and etc., in ours. Sadly, the Ironsides had to move back to Canada for a while, but the funny thing is we still kept the owl thing going, sending silly T-shirts, small owls and owl cards at Christmastime. We were happy when the Ironsides were able to return to Mesa a couple years back, so to celebrate we gave them some nice gifts for Christmas, such as owl eggs, a geniune owl feather boa, and of course the traditional, "You've been naughty, so here's the scoop, all you get is OWL poop!", malted milk balls, and managed to hide the plastic owl in their yard at our visit. (It took them over two weeks to find it and they only did because their dog started growling at it.) They left us the most beautiful owl garland draped across our front door on Christmas Eve. We all had a good laugh together Christmas day. We put the owl garland away, and discovered the owl adorned with a red bow in our yard a few weeks after Christmas, we tucked it away as well. The next Christmas, we took the small owls from the Garland, glued small hymnbooks to them, and created an "Owl"lelujah Chorus wreath. We went to their home, hid the owl, with a candy cane placed in the hole where the beak fell off and then attempted to replace the wreath on their door, with the owl wreath. It was going okay, until I tried to remove their wreath off the door, and the wreath holder snapped back with a TWANG, the dogs started barking and Beth was flying towards the door. Laura dropped the wreath on the porch, and ran, trailing me as I had decided to let Laura fend for herself seconds earlier. Mike was waiting in the car around the corner, we jumped in and Laura declares, "Mom, that was a FAIL!" We watched Beth pick up the wreath and look around for someone, she gave up and went inside. We did go back later with a real neighbor gift, and had a good laugh, and it took them a good week, to discover the owl in their yard. We haven't seen the yellows of that owl's eyes, since, so we're anticipating when it will show up this year. Since we didn't have the owl, we decided to get creative and we made up a mock CD and cover with Owl Christmas Songs, like, The First No-owl, All I Want for Christmas is a New Front Beak...you get the idea. It was fun to be creative and so nice to visit and laugh with our old neighbors at Christmastime. And...that is how a plastic owl became part of our Christmas traditions.