Black and grey sketch-style tattoo of a barn owl with spread wings, holding a small cottage in its talons, on the outer thigh.

Barn owl carrying a cottage on a thigh

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A barn owl with spread wings fills the upper part of the design, with its amber eyes as the only warm colour. Below it, talons grip a small cottage with a tiled roof, a chimney and leaves around it. The linework is loose and sketchy, with dotted and hatched shading on the owl's face and wings, and the design wraps across the thigh.

Dotwork Thigh Owl Barn owl House Talon Feather Leaves Chimney

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the owl came back to the lot on Tuesday, sitting on top of the generator as if it had paid for the pitch. Mr Varley says it has been coming to the Lincolnshire fields since before the fair had lights, and nobody has ever seen it nest. It just turns up at dusk with those amber eyes and looks at the ghost train as if it is marking the rent.

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Last night the wind got into the big top and the lads were up the ladders with ropes. Mr Varley's little painted cottage, the one from the coconut shy, had come unhooked from its trailer and was rolling toward the ditch. I went after it with a torch, and the owl went past my head, low, and I swear it took hold of the roof in its talons and lifted. It carried the thing six feet, set it down on the chalk verge as neat as a parcel, then sat on the chimney and blinked at me.

Mr Varley just nodded. He said the owl had carried his mother's cottage out of a flood on the Trent in 1951, and that a barn owl only ever takes what it means to keep.

I have not told the others that the coconut shy cottage still had straw packed into its shutters and a fresh leaf caught under the door. Come up at the end of the month and bring your good boots, as we are heading for the coast. Love, Pen.