Endless, Faint Soughing

Hey! In HUNGER by Knut Hamsun, which I read on the airplane at the suggestion of Katelyn from Square Books, our narrator is trying to sleep in the woods, but is distracted by "the eternal song of wind and weather... I listened so long to this endless, faint soughing that it began to confuse me; it could only be the symphonies coming from the whirling worlds above me..." Such thoughts begin to make him nervous, so, to cheer himself up, he says aloud, "The hell it is! It is the night owls of Canaan hooting!" Now, I don't know what the night owls of Canaan are, or why they would cheer you up any more than, say, the symphonies coming from the whirling worlds above you, which sound pretty nice when you put it that way, but I DO know that I keep a list of every book I read that has an owl in it.