-What a din! Who’s making all that noise?

-Who! What do you mean who? I’m the one saying whooo! Olivier the owl. Who are you?

-I’m Seamus, the insomniac seagull. Do you really have to shout all night long?

-Sorry, but that’s what I do. I’m nocturnal.

-Noc… what? Well, I wish you’d knock it off!

-Pardon?

-Aw, nothing. Sorry, I’m a bit cranky from lack of sleep. It was bad enough during the day, what with that stupid cuckoo earlier. Can’t even tell the time, that one! He was cuckooing 17 o’clock, then 23 o’clock… his record is 38 o’clock. What a twit!

-Twit? Twoo! Hang on. I think you’re confusing wooden cuckoo clock cuckoos with real ones. Real ones have nothing to do with time keeping, they just cuckoo as often as they like.

-How undisciplined of them! We wooden birds could teach them a thing or two. My lady owner used to have a cuckoo clock and the little chap inside never once went over 12 cuckoos. She could even shut him up at night by locking his door.

-Well, sorry, that’s not the way things work out here in the real world. Count yourself lucky that the nightingales haven’t started yet. Come summer, that lot never shut up. All night, every night! An owl can hardly hear himself hoot over that racket!

-Really? I sure hope we’re long gone by summer, so! Anyway, where do you live, Olivier?

-See that barn over there? I’ve got the whole upper floor practically to myself. I just share it with a few bats, and any mice that venture in… well, let’s just say that they don’t last, I mean, hang about for very long.

-Lucky you. That looks like pretty luxurious accommodation too.

-Don’t be fooled. You wouldn’t believe how often these stone barns collapse. Two of my second cousins and a brother-in-law lost their homes in the crash of 2008.

-What? How on earth can that happen? They sure look sturdy enough.

-Neglect. It is incredible how humans fail to look after the buildings their ancestors worked so hard to construct. A few tiles slip, the beams get wet, rot over time and next thing you know, boom! The roof has caved in.

-What a shame!

-Oui. But I don’t know what’s worse, collapsed barns or renovated barns. The recent trend here has been to convert barns into homes for humans. Then all the gaps get blocked up, so we poor owls have no hope of getting in.

-Oh, that’s a bummer all right. What do you do if you get evicted from a barn?

-Ah, we can usually manage to sneak into an attic somewhere. Problem is, humans don’t seem to appreciate owls living in their attics. They complain about the noise we make. And I don’t just mean hooting. You know, tramping about, belching, breaking wind…

-What’s wrong with that? Sure, it’s not as if they don’t do that themselves. Especially the male ones after a Saturday night out on the town.

-I know. It’s pure discrimination! Anyway, the good thing is that there’s an owl protection society here in France, so if the humans don’t appreciate having us as tenants, they can call on them. They apparently come and collect unwanted birds and bring them to an owl refuge. The accommodation is great, I hear.

-Lucky you. Apart from being rescued from the occasional oil slick, us seagulls pretty much have to fend for ourselves. No VIP treatment for us!

-Alors, Seamus, I must fly. The night is young and I’ve a good few hours hunting ahead of me.

-Ok, Olivier. Bonne nuit! But, before you go, can I just ask, what do you do during the day?

-During the day? I don’t give a hoot!

Illustrations: Barn Owl by Kati Schenk (biologist and comic strip blogger, http://gaiverruksia.sarjakuvablogit.com), Seamus the Seagull by Seóirse-Louis Gibney (age 7)