The Owl
Story by: Brothers Grimm
Source: Kinder- und Hausmärchen

Once upon a time, in a peaceful village nestled in a valley surrounded by rolling hills and dense forests, there stood a large, sturdy barn that belonged to a prosperous farmer. This barn had served the community for many years, storing grain through harsh winters and providing shelter for various animals during storms. Its thick wooden walls and solid roof had weathered countless seasons, and the people of the village took great pride in this substantial building that represented their collective prosperity and security.
One particularly cold winter evening, when the snow was falling heavily and the wind was howling through the bare branches of the trees, a large owl found herself caught in the fierce storm. She was a magnificent creature, with feathers of mottled brown and gray that shimmered in the moonlight, and great golden eyes that held the wisdom of many years spent observing the world from her perch high in the ancient oak trees of the forest.
The owl had been hunting for food when the storm suddenly intensified, and she found herself struggling against the powerful gusts of wind and the thick, swirling snow that made it nearly impossible for her to see where she was going. Her usually keen eyesight, which served her so well during her nocturnal hunts, was no match for the blinding whirlwind of white that surrounded her on all sides.
Desperate for shelter, the owl spotted the warm glow of light emanating from the windows of the barn below. She could sense that this was a place of safety and warmth, somewhere she could wait out the worst of the storm before continuing her journey. With great effort, she fought against the wind and managed to find a small opening near the top of the barn, where a few boards had loosened over time, creating just enough space for her to slip inside.
Once inside the barn, the owl felt immediate relief from the bitter cold and driving snow. The air was much warmer here, warmed by the body heat of the animals and insulated by the thick walls. She found a comfortable perch on one of the wooden rafters, high above the stalls where the farmer’s cows and horses rested peacefully, and settled down to wait for the storm to pass.
The owl was a peaceful creature by nature, content to sit quietly and observe her surroundings. She had no intention of disturbing the other animals or causing any harm. In fact, she hoped that her presence might even be beneficial, as she was a natural hunter of mice and rats that might otherwise eat the farmer’s stored grain. She tucked her head beneath her wing and prepared to rest until morning, when the storm would hopefully have passed and she could continue on her way.
However, the owl’s arrival had not gone unnoticed. One of the farmer’s servants, a young man who had come to check on the animals before retiring for the night, happened to catch a glimpse of her large, luminous eyes gleaming in the darkness of the barn’s upper reaches. In the dim light cast by his flickering lantern, the owl’s eyes appeared enormous and otherworldly, and her motionless form seemed mysterious and potentially threatening to the nervous young man.
The servant had always been somewhat superstitious, influenced by the many old tales and legends that circulated among the villagers about creatures of the night and the omens they might bring. To him, the sudden appearance of such a large owl in their barn seemed like a portent of doom, a sign that something terrible was about to befall the village.
Without taking the time to observe the owl more carefully or to consider that she might simply be seeking shelter from the storm, the servant rushed back to the farmhouse in a state of great agitation. He burst through the door, interrupting the farmer’s family as they sat peacefully by their warm fire, enjoying a simple supper of bread and soup.
“Master!” the servant cried, his voice trembling with fear and excitement. “There’s a monster in the barn! A terrible creature with glowing eyes as big as saucers! It’s sitting up in the rafters, watching everything with those horrible, unblinking eyes. I’ve never seen anything so frightening in all my life!”
The farmer, a practical man who had lived in the countryside all his life and was familiar with the various creatures that inhabited the local forests, was initially skeptical of his servant’s dramatic claims. “Calm yourself,” he said, setting down his spoon and looking at the young man with a mixture of concern and mild irritation. “What exactly did you see? Describe it more clearly.”
But the servant’s fear had infected his ability to think rationally, and his description of the owl became increasingly exaggerated with each telling. “It’s enormous!” he insisted, spreading his arms wide to demonstrate. “Bigger than any bird I’ve ever seen, with eyes that seem to see right through you and talons that could tear a man apart! And it’s sitting there so still and silent, like it’s waiting for something terrible to happen!”
The farmer’s wife, who had been listening to this exchange with growing alarm, began to feel uneasy as well. She had heard stories from her grandmother about evil spirits that sometimes took the form of large birds, and the servant’s description reminded her of these frightening tales. “Perhaps we should go and look for ourselves,” she suggested nervously. “If there really is something dangerous in the barn, we need to know about it.”
So the farmer, his wife, and the servant bundled themselves up in their warmest coats and boots and made their way through the still-falling snow to the barn. The farmer carried a large lantern, and his wife brought along a wooden staff, just in case they needed to defend themselves.
When they opened the barn door and held up the lantern to peer into the dark interior, they immediately spotted the owl sitting peacefully on her rafter perch. In the flickering, unsteady light of the lantern, the owl did indeed appear quite large and imposing, and her golden eyes reflected the light in a way that made them seem to glow with an inner fire.
But the farmer, despite his initial skepticism, found himself affected by the atmosphere of fear that his servant had created. The owl’s complete stillness, which was simply her natural behavior when resting, seemed ominous and unnatural to the humans below. Her ability to turn her head almost completely around to look at them directly added to their sense that this was no ordinary bird.
“By heaven,” whispered the farmer, his voice filled with a growing dread, “I’ve never seen an owl that large before. Look at the size of those talons! And those eyes… it’s as if it can see into our very souls.”
The farmer’s wife clutched his arm tightly. “There’s something unnatural about it,” she said in a trembling voice. “No ordinary bird would sit so still and stare at us like that. I think it might be a witch in disguise, or some kind of evil spirit come to bring misfortune to our village.”
The servant, feeling vindicated by their reaction, nodded vigorously. “I told you it was a monster! We have to do something before it brings some terrible curse upon us all!”
The three humans retreated from the barn, their minds now filled with irrational fears and dark imaginings about the peaceful owl who wanted nothing more than to wait out the storm in warmth and safety. Instead of recognizing her for what she truly was—a harmless creature seeking shelter—they had allowed their prejudices and superstitions to transform her into a terrifying monster in their minds.
Back in the farmhouse, the farmer and his family held an urgent conference about what to do about their unwelcome visitor. The servant continued to insist that the owl represented some kind of supernatural threat, and his fears proved to be contagious. Soon, the farmer’s wife was convinced that the owl’s presence would bring disease to their livestock, crop failures to their fields, and general misfortune to their household.
“We can’t just leave it there,” she said, pacing back and forth in front of the fire. “Who knows what evil it might be planning? We have to find a way to get rid of it before it brings some terrible catastrophe down upon us.”
The farmer, who prided himself on being a decisive man of action, made a fateful decision. “You’re right,” he said grimly. “We can’t take any chances with something like this. If we can’t drive it away, then we’ll have to destroy it before it has a chance to harm us.”
But when they returned to the barn with tools and weapons, they found that the owl was not so easily frightened. She had encountered humans before and knew that they were generally harmless to her as long as she remained out of their reach. When they shouted at her and waved their arms, she simply looked down at them with her calm, golden eyes and remained exactly where she was on her high perch.
When they threw stones and sticks at her, she easily avoided them by shifting slightly along the rafter, her excellent reflexes and natural agility making her an impossible target. When they tried to reach her with long poles and pitchforks, she simply moved to a different rafter, always staying just out of their reach.
The farmer became increasingly frustrated by his inability to dislodge the owl from her perch. His pride was wounded by the fact that a mere bird was defying his authority in his own barn, and his fear was growing stronger with each passing moment that the owl remained in place, seemingly mocking their efforts to remove her.
“If we can’t reach the creature directly,” he said to his wife and servant, his face red with exertion and anger, “then we’ll have to find another way to solve this problem. We can’t let this monster continue to threaten our community.”
In their panic and desperation, the three humans came up with increasingly extreme solutions. First, they tried to smoke the owl out by building small fires near the barn entrance, hoping that the smoke would drive her away. But the owl, being a creature of the wild, was accustomed to the smoke from natural forest fires and was not particularly bothered by it.
Next, they attempted to starve her out by removing all sources of food from the barn, thinking that hunger would eventually force her to leave. But the owl was a skilled hunter who was perfectly capable of finding her own food, and she had no intention of relying on anything in the barn for sustenance anyway.
As their frustration mounted and their fears continued to grow, the farmer and his family began to consider more drastic measures. The servant suggested that they might need to seek help from other villagers, spreading the word about the “monster” in their barn and organizing a larger group to deal with the threat.
This idea quickly gained momentum, and before long, word had spread throughout the entire village about the terrible creature that had taken up residence in the farmer’s barn. As the story passed from person to person, it became increasingly exaggerated and distorted. The owl grew larger and more fearsome with each telling, her eyes became more supernatural and penetrating, and her mere presence was blamed for every small misfortune that befell anyone in the village.
By the next morning, a large crowd of villagers had gathered outside the farmer’s property, all eager to see the monster for themselves and to help rid their community of this perceived threat. Men brought axes, hammers, and saws. Women brought brooms and kitchen knives. Even the children were armed with sticks and stones, all ready to do battle with the creature that had supposedly invaded their peaceful village.
The village blacksmith, a large and burly man who was respected for his strength and practical wisdom, took charge of the group. “We can’t allow this creature to remain in our midst,” he declared in a booming voice that carried across the crowd. “If it’s too cunning to be caught or driven away, then we’ll have to take more decisive action.”
“What do you suggest?” asked the farmer, who was beginning to feel overwhelmed by the size of the crowd and the intensity of their emotions.
The blacksmith pointed to the barn with his massive hammer. “If we can’t remove the monster from the barn,” he said grimly, “then we’ll remove the barn from around the monster. We’ll tear this building down board by board if necessary, and crush the creature beneath the falling timbers.”
A cheer went up from the crowd at this suggestion. The idea of taking such dramatic action against their supposed enemy appealed to their sense of righteous anger and their desire to do something concrete about the problem that had been keeping them awake at night with worry.
And so, in a frenzy of fear-driven destruction, the entire village set upon the innocent barn with their tools and weapons. They attacked the sturdy building that had served their community so well for so many years, tearing off boards, pulling down rafters, and systematically destroying everything that the farmer had worked so hard to build and maintain.
The owl, faced with this sudden chaos and destruction, finally realized that her peaceful shelter was no longer safe. As the walls began to crumble around her and the roof started to collapse, she spread her great wings and took flight, easily soaring up and out through the opening that the villagers had created in their frenzied demolition.
She circled once above the crowd of humans, looking down at them with what might have been sadness or disappointment in her wise eyes, before flying away into the forest, leaving the villagers to contemplate the destruction they had wrought in their misguided fear.
When the dust finally settled and the villagers stood among the ruins of what had once been a fine, substantial barn, they began to realize the magnitude of their mistake. The building that had taken months to construct and had cost the farmer a significant portion of his savings was now nothing more than a pile of broken boards and scattered straw.
The farmer stood amid the wreckage, looking at the destroyed remnants of his barn with a mixture of shock and growing comprehension. “What have we done?” he whispered, as the reality of their actions began to sink in. “We’ve destroyed my barn… for what? To drive away a bird that was probably just seeking shelter from the storm?”
The blacksmith, his anger now spent, looked around at the destruction with dawning embarrassment. “It was just an owl,” he said quietly, as if saying the words aloud would help him understand how they had all become so caught up in their fears. “Just a common barn owl, looking for a warm place to spend the night.”
The farmer’s wife picked up a piece of broken wood that had once been part of a carefully crafted beam. “We let our fears run away with us,” she admitted, her voice filled with regret. “We saw a threat where none existed, and we destroyed something valuable in our panic.”
The servant who had first spotted the owl hung his head in shame. “I should have looked more carefully,” he said. “I should have realized that it was just a bird, not some supernatural monster. My fear made me see things that weren’t really there.”
One by one, the villagers began to drift away from the scene of destruction, each carrying with them a sense of shame and embarrassment about their role in the day’s events. They had allowed their prejudices and superstitions to override their common sense, and they had destroyed something valuable in the process.
The farmer was left to survey the damage alone, calculating the cost of rebuilding and wondering how he would store his grain and shelter his animals until a new barn could be constructed. The irony was not lost on him that in their effort to protect their property and their community from an imagined threat, they had ended up destroying one of their most valuable assets.
As evening approached and the owl returned to the area to continue her search for food, she flew over the spot where the barn had once stood. She looked down at the scattered debris with her keen eyes, perhaps understanding better than the humans what had really happened there.
The owl had no malice toward the people who had destroyed her temporary shelter. She was a creature of the wild, accustomed to the changing whims of nature and the sometimes inexplicable behavior of humans. She simply continued on her way, finding another roosting spot in a hollow tree deep in the forest, where she would be safe from the fears and prejudices of those who could not see past their own misconceptions.
And so the village learned a valuable lesson about the dangers of letting fear and prejudice guide their actions. They learned that sometimes the greatest threats are not the external dangers that we imagine, but the destructive impulses that come from within our own hearts when we allow ignorance and superstition to overcome reason and compassion.
From that day forward, whenever the villagers encountered something unfamiliar or potentially frightening, they tried to remember the lesson of the owl and the barn. They learned to look more carefully, to think more clearly, and to ask themselves whether their fears were based on real threats or simply on their own misunderstandings and prejudices.
And sometimes, on quiet winter evenings when the snow was falling and the wind was howling through the trees, the villagers would hear the soft hooting of an owl in the distance and remember the night when their own fears had caused more destruction than any real monster ever could.
The tale of the owl and the barn became a story that parents told their children, and that the children would someday tell their own children, as a reminder that wisdom lies not in giving in to our fears, but in taking the time to understand what we are really afraid of, and whether our fears are justified by the facts or simply by our own imagination.
And the moral of this story, as clear as the golden eyes of the wise owl herself, was that we often destroy what we should protect, and fear what we should welcome, when we allow prejudice and superstition to cloud our judgment and guide our actions.
Comments
comments powered by Disqus