Owl

**Owl** is a supporting character in The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

## Background

Owl is, as his name would suggest, an anthropomorphized owl, with light tan plumage on his underside and brown plumage on his head, tail, and back. His three-taloned feet are also brown. He has a short tuft of white feathers just under his beak, somewhat resembling a beard. The area around his eyes is a slightly lighter shade of brown. His eyes are black with pale yellow sclera, and his eyebrows are dark brown. Owl's beak is yellow.

Owl was hatched in a tree near Eeyore's Gloomy Place in the Hundred Acre Wood. He recalled his mother scraping into the bark to literally mark the occasion. Owl currently resides at the top of a tree.

Owl comes from an extremely large family, with a colorful history. Nearly every situation that Owl finds himself in can be related to a specific story regarding one of his relatives—this often prompts Owl to ramble on about his ancestors, much to the boredom of his friends. Owl has several portraits of his relatives displayed throughout his home.

Like Rabbit, Owl is traditionally portrayed as a real animal, as opposed to a stuffed toy belonging to Christopher Robin (regardless, he has been depicted as a stuffed owl in Christopher's room in several films). Despite not always being portrayed as one of Christopher Robin's toys, Owl is one of his fondest friends. He often acts as Christopher's eyes and ears in the Hundred Acre Woods; his considerable maturity and ability to fly makes him a crucial part of solving problems throughout the forest, though he can occasionally overlook this fact due to his minimal intelligence.

Owl is considered by most to be the smartest resident of the Hundred Acre Wood. He is known for talking about his many relatives and tends to tell long, drawn-out stories, which tend to bore the others.

Though Owl is indeed an intellectual, his intelligence is somewhat questionable, as well as his ability to read, as twice he misread messages from Christopher Robin and believed the boy was in danger, causing unnecessary worry in Pooh and friends, and sometimes even almost getting them killed. It should be noted, however, that Owl has *some* legitimate ability to read and write, though Christopher Robin's juvenile spelling and grammar are causing Owl confusion.

## In the series

Owl appears regularly in the animated series, though he is considered a supporting character. Owl is shown to live in the same treehouse that was seen in the Winnie the Pooh films. Despite not appearing as often as others, he does feature prominently in a few episodes. In the episode "Owl Feathers", the gang believe that Owl is going bald after they find a pile of feathers. It is later revealed that the feathers were not Owl's, but were from Christopher Robin's pillow because Pooh and Christopher Robin had a pillow fight the previous night. In "Owl's Well That Ends Well", Owl is revealed to be a terrible singer, though he himself doesn't realize it. However, Rabbit comes to appreciate the singing, as it keeps the crows out of his garden. In "My Hero", Tigger becomes Piglet's servant, due to a policy stated by Owl that when one is rescued, the rescuee must serve the rescuer as a form of repayment.

Like always, Owl often talks about his relatives, and several appear in the show. He has a younger cousin named Dexter who appears in the episodes "The Bug Stops Here", in which he is babysat by Pooh, and in "Owl in the Family", alongside Owl's Great Uncle Torbett and Aunt Ophelia. In the episode "Prize Piglet" Owl reveals that his Uncle Albert once raced from Albania to Zanzibar. Overall, Owl appears in a total of 29 out of 82 episodes.

## Trivia

* The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is the final time Hal Smith voices Owl. Smith died from a heart attack on January 28, 1994 at the age of 77.