Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 10 February 1931
An owl has been discovered in a bedroom in South Kensington ? apparently it had chased an unfortunate sparrow down the chimney, and, having captured the sparrow, had been unable to get back. Surprise is expressed at its presence in such parts. But supposing owls are to visit London at all, where else could it have been more appropriately found? The owl is the bird of wisdom, and in Kensington it was within easy reach of some of the most important of national museums.
There may be those who would say the modern owl should "see Fleet Street first," where wisdom for the multitude is issued in daily doses. Others, again, might put in a claim for Bloomsbury, not so much on behalf of its British Museum as for the altitude of the brows which are reported to cluster thickly in the adjoining squares. But if Bloomsbury is admitted to be a little owlish in that sense, would not the highbrows of Hampstead also be entitled to attention? On the whole, it would seem the owl showed its traditional wisdom by making straight for Kensington; there is, perhaps, less risk of learning being there confused with cliques, coteries, or the claims of rival circulation departments. But it does not seem to have been at all a distinguished visitor, a minion of Minerva, but merely a very ordinary and ill-behaved owl that pursued its prey to the hearthrug (by an avenue of approach that ought to be reserved for Father Christmas). Possibly the owl, if reproached for this behaviour, would reply that it is merely returning a human compliment. When foxes are sometimes slain in kitchens and hunted stags done to death, in gardens, the owl may argue that it is quite entitled to a kill in Kensington.
The Muskrat Menace
A correspondent reports the arrival of another alien of questionable habits:-
Despite the lack of concern shown by dwellers in the British countryside at the sighting of stray muskrats ? large numbers of which are now being bred for musquash fur on numerous swampy ground "farms" in Britain, should any escape, they should be taken seriously as a real menace to agriculture.
France fears a muskrat invasion from Central Europe, where, twenty-five years since the first seven specimens were imported from the American North-west and turned loose in a Bohemian count's estate, they now, by the million, honeycomb the banks of canals and rivers. They have invaded Vienna itself, swimming down the Danube by night and landing in the middle of the city.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/feb/10/archive-kensington-apt-tomb-1931
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