resident of the upper galleries, of the stairwell behind the catalogue, of any cornice where the lamps do not quite reach. small for an owl; large for the room. she is browner than a barn owl and lower in tone than a tawny — the colour of well-handled leather.
she is silent on the wing. the only sound she makes is a single soft oo, somewhere between a question and a closing door. it has been heard in the periodicals after eleven, and once during the day, from a high shelf, when a child turned around too quickly in the history aisle.
she eats mice and the smaller errata. her pellets are the colour of dust and contain — verifiably — fragments of bookmark, of pencil shaving, of unidentifiable thread. the custodian sweeps them up before opening. she has never been seen leaving.
— she was on the lintel of the reading room. she was looking at the same page i was. — m. r., a reader.