Small brown owl with large round eyes perched on a leafy branch, tattooed on the outside of an ankle.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl on a branch on an ankle

Ankle · Colour · Photo

A cartoon-style owl with large round eyes sits on a thin branch with three leaves. The linework is dark and fairly bold, with shading in brown and grey on the owl's body and branch. The design sits low on the ankle and is shown in a close, slightly angled photograph against a plain skin background.

Ankle Owl Branch Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm had kept the night office for thirty winters and never once slept through the bell, so when the owl came to the bell-tower ledge, he took it for a sign of his own failing. It was a small brown bird with eyes like two wet pennies. It sat on the thin branch the abbot had nailed above the door for the swallows, and it watched him.

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Every night after compline he climbed the stair with his lantern, and every night the owl was there, turning its head to follow the flame. The novices said it was a witch's familiar. The cellarer said it was after the mice in the granary and would be welcome to them. Anselm said nothing, because the owl had begun to wake him before the bell, tapping its beak once against the shutter, and he had not been late since.

In the spring of the flood the river rose over the lower meadow, and the brothers went out in boats to fetch the goats. Anselm stayed at the tower with the lantern lit and counted the bell strokes aloud so the men on the water could find their way home by sound. When his voice cracked, the owl dropped from its branch and settled on the rail beside the rope, its round eyes catching the light.

They found the last boat at dawn, pulled into the willows with the goats bleating in the bottom. Afterwards the abbot had a new branch cut with three leaves still on it and set beside the tower door, and nobody thought it strange when the leaves came green again in June.