Raptus Regaliter

In my first job, I used to work with an ex-submariner, who had been on nuclear submarines until it was discovered he held an Irish passport.

Now, nuclear submarines tend to have a long tour of duty, and they stay underwater for all six months of it.  Therefore, to stop the crew going blind, the Royal Navy gives preferential treatment to any leisure equipment requisitions for submarines.  This particular submarine crew contained a sailor who had picked up a book on macrame.  Some rope was requisitioned.  A whacking great big chunk of the stuff they use to tie up battleships, to be exact.  This meant there was enough string for every one of the crew to make multiple copies of all the projects in the book.

Which they did.

The ultimate project in this book was a macrame owl.  After three months, every single pipe and every single gauge in the entire submarine had a macrame owl sitting on it.  Every wall, every cabinet and every control had a macrame owl staring out from it.  It was sort of like the Star Trek episode "Trouble With Tribbles", only with less klingons and a lot of owls made from string.

With one important difference.  Tribbles can't stare, because tribbles don't have eyes like macrame owls, and the entire submarine was filled with owls.  Small owls, big owls, medium-sized owls, all staring...Staring...STARING....

After a month of owl staring, the Captain ordered all owls to be collected and flushed out of the torpedo tubes, and macrame was banned.

Christ alone knows what anyone made of the mysterious owl slick that appeared in the middle of the ocean, totally unbidden.  Hopefully they'll read this post and realise what happened.