Traditional style flash design of a grey owl with orange eyes carrying an envelope, with two banners reading Don't count your owls until they have been delivered, set against blue clouds and stars.

Owl carrying an envelope with banner scrolls

Traditional · Mixed · Flash

A grey and black owl with wings spread and orange eyes holds a sealed envelope in its beak. Two tan banners cross the top and bottom of the design, with the words in red-outlined lettering that has been partly struck through. The background is deep blue with teal clouds and small sparkles, and the bold outlines and shaded feathers are typical of traditional flash.

Traditional Neo-trad Owl Envelope Banner Lettering Cloud Star Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Old Hannah at the crossroads post box always swore the owl had never once been late. Every night after the lamps went out in Thrale, a grey owl with copper eyes dropped out of the beech wood, took the letters from the box in its beak, and by morning every one had reached its door. The farmers relied on it. Nobody thought to count the owl.

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Tom Bellamy was the exception. He kept geese, held a grudge against his brother, and one winter decided he would take the owl's count himself. He strung baited wire across the lane and waited behind the wall with his lantern hooded. When the owl came down for the envelope addressed to his brother's widow, Tom thought he had it. The bird only looked at him with those orange eyes, lifted off over the wall, and carried the letter away still sealed.

Tom went home swearing he had been robbed. By morning there was a letter on his own doorstep, the one he had written a year before asking his brother for the meadow back. It was unopened, the wax still whole, and it had been there all night while he sat up waiting for the owl to come to him.

Hannah heard the story from Tom himself, who came into the shop red-faced and asked for a stamp he did not need. She told it to every customer for forty years. Tom never again said a thing was his until it had come through the door.