Owls are creatures of great juxtaposition.  Western cultures generally connect owls with wisdom. This association goes back as far as Ancient Greece, where Athens, noted for art and scholarship held the owl as a symbol of knowledge.  However in African, Middle Eastern and American cultures, owls have been considered a bird of ill omen, a funereal bird, a monster of the night, an evil omen, and even the very abomination of human kind.