Autumn is, for many people, the most beautiful season. As the summer leaves die off and turn vibrant shades of red, gold, and orange, millions of people worldwide, particularly in North America and East Asia, love to view the foliage, celebrate the harvest, and engage in outdoor activities. Across North America, however, the leaves were not the only things dying, after a grizzly-bear-sized snowy owl launched a series of attacks on unsuspecting people enjoying the autumn scenery.
They never got to see the peak fall foliage
As the leaves were just beginning to turn in the Shenandoah Valley, a couple incorrectly identified as Thomas and Martha Jefferson asked a passing hiker to take their photo as they sat on a scenic overlook. The hiker unwittingly captured their last moments, as the grizzly-bear sized snowy owl suddenly burst through the trees and crushed them in its powerful talons in a scene eerily reminiscent of the owl attacks on couples in cars across the nation the previous spring. The hiker survived by jumping off the side of the scenic overlook, and although she sustained a compound fracture of one leg, she later said it was a small price to pay to escape with her life. "You expect to maybe encounter weirdos, vagrants, maybe rapists or psycho killers when you're out hiking, so I always carry mace," she said. "And there's always the possibility of an attack by a black bear or cougar or coyote, or some other predator, or a rabid raccoon. But I really wasn't expecting a giant owl to come out of nowhere and kill those people." The owl then flew along the Skyline Drive, killing between 24 and 19,876 additional people. Apparently neither romantic couples on foot or in cars, nor families, nor larger groups of tourists were spared.
Her first hunting trip could have become her last...
In New Hampshire, where the autumn was further along, the owl was also seen lurking around unwary hunters. In one incident, a 13-year-old had recently bagged her first deer, and was proudly showing the buck to her friends and family, when the owl appeared. The quick-thinking hunting party grabbed their guns and attempted to shoot the owl, but the owl was uninjured, and merely flew away after flinging one of their trucks into the forest and starting a wildfire. The 13-year-old hunter recalled, "Our bullets didn't appear to have any affect on the owl. I know we didn't miss, because it was right there in front of us. But they didn't hurt him. He just looked annoyed. I'm a bit disappointed, because that would have been a pretty cool trophy." Other hunting parties were not as lucky. Between 42 and 8,381 people were killed by the owl in the New Hampshire wilderness.
A father-son fishing trip that one would never forget, and the other would not survive
The owl was next seen in north-central Pennsylvania, where it encountered a father and son on a fly fishing expedition. The older man was decapitated by the grizzly-bear-sized raptor. "I can't believe this happened," said the man's son, a graduate student. "My graduate advisor was killed by a giant white owl at the beginning of the school year. This really gave me a hard time with my graduate studies, but somehow things were becoming ok. Then my father, who I didn't see for years after he abandoned my mother and me, came back from Germany or wherever he was, and said he was sorry for being a c***, and said we should go on a fishing trip. I used to wish to go on fishing trips with him, so I thought it would be nice. And then this happens -- again, killed by a giant white owl. The odds of this happening twice are absurdly small. I think maybe I am cursed. Why did this happen?"
The pale wings of death mirrored on a river of autumn gold
The owl then flew off to the northeast and circled down the Hudson river, where it was last observed about to smash a small rowboat in its talons before flying off, its white wings contrasting dramatically with the rich fall colors. Although the widespread nature of the owl's autumn carnage causes the total death toll to remain unclear, it is believed to be somewhere between 89 and 481,986 people.
Autumn is also a season that is celebrated in many Asian countries, such as China and Japan, but there have been no reports of the grizzly-bear-sized snowy owl in any part of Asia. However, with the association of Tokyo with strange creatures such as Godzilla, Gamera and Mothra, to say nothing of Japan's robot innovations, it continues to be unclear whether the appearance of the owl in Tokyo would elicit any special attention.
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