I was watching a version of RICHARD II and let's just say things weren't going great for Richard II. He put it poetically, of course: "night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing." Friends, when I heard that, as you can well imagine, I sprang from my chair in a dither. It was the biggest thing that has happened around here since the commencement of the unpleasantness. Now, I had to dig out my copy of RICHARD II to double check it, because the actor playing Richard (this may have been the work of my untrustworthy old ears) seemed to pronounce it "night-howls." "What are night-howls?" I wondered. "Leave it to Shakespeare!" I may have chuckled wisely. Larks and owls go together better than larks and howls, but what do I know? Anyway, I checked, and yes, they are owls, not howls, though I was reminded of how, in my lamentable second book, I invented a French scientist who pronounced owls as "howls," which was my bizarre idea, at the time, of a comical French accent.
