Jackson Free Press

The Owl and the Pussycats

Q. I hear you are a cat person, so maybe you can help me out. After putting a bell on my cat, I've noticed several owls hanging around. Do bells attract owls?
— Who-o-o Knows in Madison County

A. You may be on to something there. I have three cats—Spit McGee, Mamie Harper and Bessie Graham—who do not wear bells, and they have never attracted owls. Come to think of it, we did have an owl that vacationed in our back yard a year or so ago, but he hung out mostly in a tall tree at the edge of Purple Crane Creek. Spit would sleep out in the yard with his feet in the air right in front of him, and the owl never made a play for him.

One day, though, I was working at the computer, and there the owl was in a nearby tree just looking through the window at me! He did one of those slow blinks with his second eyelid before he saw me. (Now, that's weird.)

As soon as he saw me looking, he swiveled his little head around so he couldn't see me. But he couldn't stand it for long, and after a little bit, he oscillated back around and set those beady eyes in my direction. The owl and I went through this little game for 30 minutes or so; then I looked out and he had vanished.

I was pretty thrilled about this owl. I just knew it must be a SIGN—a portent—of what, I didn't know, but I felt like it had to be something good. A few days I was talking to an elderly man who worked down the street, and he had been watching the owl, too. I asked him if he knew whether an owl was supposed to be a sign of good luck. "Never heard that one," he said, "but he will get rid of the rats from that old ditch in your back yard. I guess that's pretty good luck." I don't know what happened to that old owl. But the cats have had a string of good luck ever since. I'm still waiting.

Take That, Manhattan

Q. I read that the population of the Jackson Metropolitan Area is 406,725, but I don't know where they all live? What IS the Jackson Metropolitan area?
— Lost in the Metroplex

A. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Jackson Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) takes in ALL the folks in ALL of Hinds, Rankin and Madison Counties—east to west, from Edwards to Pelahatchie, and then some. And that's 2,374 square miles, or 1,519, 360 acres.
For those who like this kind of thing, the Jackson metro area is just about the size of the state of Delaware and one and one-half the size of Rhode Island! By comparison, New York City, with all its five boroughs, is only 309 square miles. The city of Jackson proper—without any outlying communities—covers nearly four times as much space as Manhattan. We are BIG.
No wonder when I go out to one of the new subdivisions in Madison County, I feel as if I've gone all the way to Memphis and need to get a hotel room! But, alas, the Peabody is nowhere to be found.

Mississippi Lies Die Hard

Q. Is it true that the father of Greenwood Leflore founded Jackson?
— Skeptical Jacksonian

A. I guess you're referring to Louis LeFleur, who was the last Choctaw chief's father. Tradition has it that Louis ran a trading post for Choctaws on the hill on the Pearl River near downtown Jackson. It makes a good story, all right. But it just ain't so. The early maps did show "LeFleur's Bluff" on the place where Jackson would be located, but there is no evidence of a trading post there operated by Louis Lefleur, which is a good thing since Louis didn't hold a commission as an Indian trader. You don't have to take from me. The chief himself served in the state Senate in the 1840s when the map was corrected to remove "LeFleur's" and say only "Bluff." Later, Leflore's family said they never heard of such a thing. But a good story dies hard—and in Mississippi it's almost impossible to kill one. The Monsieur Lefleur connection continued to get better, with later versions of the story giving the site of the Old Capitol as Greenwood Leflore's own birthplace. In the mid-1970s, the historian Robert McDonald exhaustively researched this matter, declaring it a "full-blown myth."

Well, you know what Mark Twain said, "Sometimes you have to lie to tell the truth."

Send any question to PO Box 2047, Jackson, Miss., 39225, or fax to 866/728-4798 (toll-free). Include name and daytime phone number.