Vinay Menon: Winky the owl burglar is not a home invader. Winky is a harbinger.

Vancouver Island residents are on the lookout for a home invader.

The suspect, described as black, grey and white, nine inches tall, 800 grams and with an ocular tic, broke into two swish homes this month. In one incident, police responded to a 911 call and found the suspect, as an officer told CTV News, “perched on a very expensive leather couch.”

I feared it might be Andy Dick. But the suspect was a barred owl.

Police are trained for tense situations and myriad dangers. But there are no departmental guidelines for winged intruders. So Oak Bay’s finest hit up Google and tried to apprehend the suspect with brooms and blankets.

It was like watching people try to catch goldfish with fly-swatters.

The suspect, named Winky, because one eye is often closed, swooped from the designer kitchen to living room, eluding the waving brooms while eliciting shrieks as cops crouched in defensive formation, staring up in terror as if an explosive Frisbee was hovering overhead.

Winky landed on an armoire and stared down at his hapless captors.

Then Winky, supremely confident, walked out the open patio doors.

As Oak Bay police tweeted: “No animals or officers were injured.”

No. But Winky, now an owl on the lam who doesn’t give a hoot, was not done with this fluttering crime spree. On Sunday, Tina Gaboury was checking on a friend’s home. She walked in to find broken vases, upturned lamps and pictures knocked off the walls. She was sure burglars had ransacked the joint.

“And as we were walking around,” she told CBC, “I was just getting my phone out to call the police, and I looked up and there was this owl hanging on the chandelier in the dining room, staring down at us.”

Winky! Pending forensics, the excess of soot across both crime scenes suggests the suspect pulled a Santa and entered through the chimneys. Excess turds suggest Winky might need to see a gastroenterologist.

In the second break-in, as Gaboury and friends cleaned up, Winky sat atop a black shelf, silently watching once again, a flying cyclops bemused by the fuss he unleashed. Then after he was transported to a patio table, Winky patiently allowed for 10 minutes of petting before flying the coop.

Winky’s whereabouts remain unknown. But don’t be surprised if there are stories next week about B.C. homeowners opening their front doors to find a squinting owl pecking at the remote control and scrolling through Netflix or using the good china and silverware to dine on mice. If there’s a robbery at Teddy’s Tackle, police will search the treetops.

I love all birds, especially owls. And I really love this story.

But is something bigger going on here? I have read so many reports this year of animals — bears, deer, cows, beavers, seals! — who are now in cat burglar mode: “Moose Breaks Into Colorado Home.” “Florida Family Finds 550-pound Alligator in Their Swimming Pool.” And this oddity from Newsweek this fall: “Raccoons Raid Politician’s Home and Defecate on Flag: ‘Not Very Patriotic.’”

No, not very. But we already know raccoons are anarchists.

Earlier this year, I came home from an event and was taking out the trash after midnight. I opened the lid and there was a furry bandit hanging out in the bin with a chicken bone in his mouth like he was playing the harmonica. He casually glanced up at me with Winky insouciance.

I’ve previously mentioned other recent Wild Kingdom backyard encounters, including with an opossum, skunk and rat the size of a pot-bellied pig. There’s a fox that must live near the Danforth as I’ve seen him multiple times, including just before Halloween when he was savaging a porch pumpkin. I had to carve that Jack-o’-lantern to disguise the hole in the back of its head. A decade ago, I never had such animal encounters.

As a species, our population hit eight billion this week. That’s a lot of people. By necessity, we keep building and sprawling and spilling into lands once occupied by other creatures. It was reported this week that human-bear encounters in New Jersey jumped 237 per cent in the past year.

This led authorities on Tuesday to greenlight a new hunting season.

One expert told the CBC that Winky might be breaking into homes in search of food or a roosting site. It’s kind of adorable when it’s a barred owl. It becomes less so when, as happened last year, a mountain lion breaks into a California home and tries to eat the owner’s dog.

Is this our future? You pull the car out of the garage and there’s an elk blocking the driveway, giving you stink eye and munching on your discarded Christmas tree while wearing your wife’s slippers? You go to the attic to find chimps drinking your Labatt Blue and playing poker? Then when you ask to be dealt in, a haughty wombat tells you to scram?

Winky is not a home invader. Winky is a harbinger.

Animals still need places to live. They don’t need keys to our homes.

SHARE: