Here in South Texas, there is no one who has not heard of the lechuza, a witch who travels at night in the form of a large owl. The witch, or bruja, is always a practitioner of evil magic and flies about to cause mischief. Some people say that she hunts unfaithful men, others say that she is looking for unprotected children to steal. Either way, her intentions are never good. Should a lechuza sit outside of a home, the inhabitants will have sickness or death befall them. Vehicles traveling at night will suddenly lose power as an owl flies past, a sure sign that the owl was actually a shape-shifted witch.
You can imagine that, given these stories, South Texans are afraid of owls. I have a friend, well, more of an acquaintance at this point I suppose, who swears that he saw a lechuza when he was a boy. According to him, he was walking home one night from visiting a neighborhood friend. The sun had already set that night, but he says that he wasn't worried. His neighborhood was very quiet and safe. Just as he was about to cross to the next block, he noticed a large number of crows sitting in the trees all around him. His eyes scanned the trees in disbelief at the sheer mass of birds. He was used to seeing the grackles since they were always to be found on his side of town, but still, there were simply more than he had ever seen at one time. And then he saw it.
Sitting right in the middle of the mass of black birds was a large owl. Now, that was definitely not something he had ever seen. Grackles avoided owls at all costs since the larger birds frequently made meals out of the black feathered birds. An owl sitting with grackles was not natural. He says that as soon as he spotted the owl, its eyes fixed upon him and wouldn't look away. Feeling a shiver of warning run down his back, he took off as fast as he could, running past the mass of birds towards home. As he passed the unnaturally still birds, they exploded into the air and began to shadow his steps until he got to his porch. He told his parents what had happened, but when then went outside to check, there were no birds to be seen. He swears the owl was actually a lechuza, the grackles her familiars.
Though you might consider the legend to be fun, there is a downside to this belief in the lechuza. Owls are not safe in South Texas. There are many people who will shoot at any owl they see, afraid that it is, if not an actual bruja, at the least, a harbinger of doom. And though this happens more in the country than in the cities, the fact that South Texas is primarily country is not a good thing for the owls.
