Page 11 - Whoos A. Fraid

Smartest looked at Fraid and explained, “I know you would like for your feeding to be the way it has always been but now that you are growing up, that is not possible. Your parents have caught food for you and made it into little pieces so that you could eat it because you were too small to do it yourself.
Now that you are older, there are lots of things you will have to learn to do and some of them will be difficult and a lot of them scary. But Fraid, you will have to learn to do them if you are to succeed. You will have to learn to find food and catch it. You will have to learn to make a nest and find a mate and raise your own offspring.”
“Stop, stop,” said Fraid. “You are just making this up. All that is not true. You just want to scare us into catching those old mice.” Many of the other young owls shook their heads in agreement while the others just looked puzzled.
This time I did not ask Smartest about Fraid’s response to the mice. I was beginning to understand that Fraid wanted things to stay the same and that to him, any change was scary.
I felt bad for Smartest because he was doing his best but when an owl does not want to listen and learn, they don’t listen or learn.
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