The Owl Who Ruled at Night

An owl, genuinely wise and thoughtful, was repeatedly passed over whenever the forest birds gathered to select advisors and leaders, since every important meeting took place during the day, when the owl, active only by night, was fast asleep and unable to participate or make his voice heard.

Loud, energetic daytime birds — parrots who could speak elaborately, peacocks who could display impressively — were chosen again and again, though several of their decisions later proved shortsighted, made without the careful, patient consideration the owl might have offered had he ever been consulted.

One year, a crisis arose that specifically required knowledge of the forest at night — nocturnal predators that only an owl could properly understand — and the flustered daytime leaders, entirely out of their depth, finally sought him out, waking him urgently in broad daylight. The owl, blinking in unfamiliar light, offered wisdom that solved the crisis immediately, and the birds, humbled, finally understood that excluding a capable mind simply because it operated on a different schedule than everyone else's had cost them years of missed insight.