Owl: “hey, you’re not food.”
In 1976 while guarding an ammo point at Wildflecken, West Germany, I was walking the perimeter with another soldier who was on the opposite side of the ammo point. Shortly after midnight, I was struck on the head from behind, my helmet liner knocked from my head, and I was driven to my knees by the force of the blow.
At first, I thought we were under assault by somebody trying to break into the ammo point, but there was no one around. Standing up, I picked up my helmet liner to replace it and saw that there were three large, deep scratches in the helmet liner. Upon looking around the area further, I spotted a very large owl perched on one of the spotlight towers. My only assumption was that this owl had thought it had seen something edible in the shine of my helmet liner and had made a swipe at it.
Although I spotted the owl .. or one similar .. on several occasions later, it never hit at me again, probably determining that I was inedible.