Black and grey realism style owl tattoo on the upper arm and shoulder, with its body filled by a silhouette of bare trees and dots.

Owl and forest on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large owl faces forward over the upper arm, with detailed sketched feathers, bright glossy eyes and a dark beak. The owl's body is filled with a silhouette of tall, bare trees and scattered dots that fade out towards the lower edge. The work is shaded in black and grey with soft wash-like areas and fine linework, set against a plain grey background.

Realism Blackwork Upper arm Shoulder Owl Tree Forest Eye Feather Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Our Dad would never say the owl's name out loud down the pit, so we all called her Mrs Hoot when he wasn't listening. She sat on the fence post above the spoil heap every night of my childhood, and when the shift whistle went at Hollin Pit she'd turn her head slow as a clock hand to watch the lamps come up the lane.

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The woods behind the village were older than the colliery. Dad said the trees had been felled twice for pit props and grown back both times, and that the owl kept count. Every morning before the cage dropped, he'd tap his lamp three times on the brick by the lamp room door, and the drops of light off the wet slate would scatter like seed across the yard. I used to think they were stars she'd swallowed.

The winter the roof came in at the east drift, nobody would go back down until the inspector signed. Dad went anyway, with Ernie Pryce and two others, because Ernie's boy was under there. I stood at the top of the lane with my gran's shawl over my head and watched the post. The owl was gone. Then, just as the rescue lamps flickered, a grey shape dropped off the heap and glided low over the bank, straight into the black mouth of the drift, as if she knew the way.

They came up at four with Ernie's boy between them, coughing dust and blinking. Dad saw me and said nothing, just pressed his cold hand to my cheek. Years later I told the lad that owls don't see in the dark at all, they only hear. He laughed and said that was a poor sort of owl. I still think of her on that post, eyes like two wet coals, listening for us.