The two boys Billy and Bruce are out on a hot summer day searching for a baby pet owl of their own. Then a crow keeps crowing and crowing on a wooden pole, Then Bruce gets irritated and goes up to the crows nest and takes its eggs and slips when he’s coming down from the tree and falls on his bottom and swallows some of the crow eggs. And starts spitting them out all over the ground meanwhile Billy is dying of laughter. Since Bruce hates the taste crow’s eggs so much he decides that its lunch time for today.

So when they decided to eat lunch Bruce had a lemon and some sardine sandwiches meanwhile Billy is eating (also) a sandwich but not a lemon an orange well enough about their lunch. Next the two boys saw an owls nest with TONS of crows around it the crows were swarming around this owls nest mad as ever. So Bruce and Billy went to go shoo away the crows from the great horned owl. The crows flew away as fast as they could after Bruce and Billy came over there.

Bruce and Billy are walking home when Bruce says “LOOKEE!!” and he sees an owls nest then Billy says “I bet that’s just an old crows nest” and the boys are too tired to climb up the tree so they decide to bring back their teacher Mr. Miller to look at it with them tomorrow. The next day Billy, Murray, Bruce and Mr. Miller go back to the owls nest. Mr. Miller climbs up the tree and puts a tent on a branch. Next Mr. Miller climbs into the tent and sticks his camera threw the hole meanwhile Billy, Murray and Bruce are going on a walk. The owl next swoops down and claws at Mr. Miller’s tree tent. And Mr. Miller falls out of the tree.

Next a big storm comes and knocks the owls nest out of the tree and the next day Bruce and Billy go and look for the owls nest its broken on the ground with 2 dead owls in it. They plan to have a funeral for the owls. While their looking for the right sticks for the cross Billy steps on a pile of sticks with an unhealthy owl under it Billy picks up the owl and the owl nips at Billy and squawks. Billy & Bruce feed the owl and care for him and the owl gives them his trust and follows them home. The next morning Billy’s dad is nagging of how Billy has too many pets then says “Actually maybe we need an owl in this family but NO more pets Billy”

The next day Billy goes on a bike ride and sees 2 kids throwing rocks into a barrel and one kid says hey Billy come over and join the fun so Billy goes over there and looks into the barrel and sees an unhealthy owl and trades it for a scout knife. Billy brings the owl home and cares for it and cleans it up and puts it into the cage with the other owl Wol and names this owl Weeps. Wol and Weeps turn out to like each other a lot. The cage has a tree and grass and Wol really likes it but enough about the cage back to the story.

Bruce and Billy enter in a pet parade with Billy’s pets he has 30 gophers, Gartner snakes, Rabbits, Rats, Snakes, Pigeons and a dog and also Bruce brings his dog and a surprise pet. They decide to dress the owls up with doll clothing and the paint black and white strips on Bruce’s dog so he looks like a zebra. And they use paint and other things to dress Billy’s dog up like a warrior. And the also use Billy’s old express wagon for the circus cage.

They didn’t win the parade but they did have a really fun time when Bruce’s “surprise pet” (rattlesnake) got loose. But the rattlesnake is really old and lost its sting. Mutt didn’t really care about Wol and Weeps but he was kind of jealous. Whenever Weeps was let out of his cage he would always search around for Mutt and when he found him Weeps would give a whoop of relief and walk over to his protectors side and they would snuggle up together. Weeps was so helpless that Mutt would protect him from all the other neighborhood dogs. Weeps hated letting Mutt out of his sight for one second

Next the two boys, their owls and dogs go to their secret cave. And they tell all about a Indian who was being chased by Mounties and how he hung himself so he wouldn’t get caught alive find out more by reading the book. Then two older boys come along and say “Hey we heard you have a cave around here somewhere your to young to have a cave tell us where it is or we’ll twist your arm right off!” Then Wol gave a Hooting scare and those boys were out of their in a second.

One midsummer day they have a visit from their church minister he was new to Saskatoon so he didn’t know about their owls. The minister sat down on the sofa with his tea, balanced his knee and started to talk to Billy’s mother about skipping Sunday school. Wol had been off on an expedition by the riverbank. When he got home he ambled across the lawn, hopped up on one of the living room window ledges and peered threw the window at the fancy dressed stranger. Next thing you know Wol had just landed heavily on the Ministers shoulder. Wol was peering around the strangers face making friendly hooting noises instead of answering back the minister made a startled scream and was out of that house in one second running to his car and driving away.

Thirty miles out of Saskatoon was a little town called Dundurn. Every summer they would camp out there in their caravan. They would tow the caravan behind their model a ford. The caravan was fixed up like a little pirates ship with ship bunks, A ships galley (which is what sailors call kitchens), ships lamps and a ships clock. On deck (the roof) there was even a little mast to call it Mowat’s Prairie Schooner. Of course whenever we took the caravan trip Mutt and the owls had to come along so my friends, the owls and Mutt used to ride in the car and sometimes people would follow us just to make sure they weren’t seeing things.

The summer when Wol and Weeps became three years old it was a very sad spring for me we had to leave Saskatoon and go to Ontario, Toronto. There were no sloughs, no gophers, no bluffs and worst of all no prairies! They couldn’t take Weeps and Wol because they hated the idea of them being locked up in a cage all the time and that would just be cruel. And they couldn’t just let them loose either because they were part of a human family for so long they couldn’t take care of themselves. So they were going to give the owls to Bruce and his new farm.

Billy showed the letter to his father and he said “sounds fine Billy what do you say we drive the owls up to Bruce’s on Friday” Billy said, “yes of course”. And that’s what they did. It was a wonderful trip to Bruce’s. On Saturday Bruce and Billy went horse riding. They were riding all over the prairie that day. On Sunday Bruce and Billy finished up the cage for the owls. Wol and Weeps didn’t suspect anything they were having to much fun to be suspicious. Sunday night they put the two owls in their cage and Billy said, “Good-bye old owls you look after each other someday maybe I’ll be back to visit you and Bruce”.

Did you know owls and crows hate each other ? Did you know Billy and Bruce have a friend named Murray? Did you know owls don’t like skunks? Did you know that in this book Wol (the owl) scared the maid Offy away? Did you know that Wol and Mutt liked to play games?

The ending of the story ended when Billy was putting the owls in their cage and was saying goodbye to them and that he might come and see them again. I would recommend this book for ages 5 – 12 because it’s a really good book and a little bit funny too. So read the book for more details. I really like this book, I would rate this book stars (Three stars)