[pam]

A man gets interested in birds, and especially owls. He studies them in bird books, and then he starts going out to his backyard every night and hooting like an owl.

Then, one night, an owl hoots back, and for a year the man and the owl hoot back and forth. The man keeps a log of the calls. He begins to think he is on the verge of a breakthrough in interspecies communication.

One day, his wife is at a party with a neighbor in the next block, and she confesses, "My husband has taken up the strangest hobby. He spends his nights calling out to some owl."

"Isn't that an odd coincidence?" her neighbor replies. "So does my husband."