Oh, another thought just occurred to me that made me gasp real soft because ow, my heart.
First, to set up what led to the thought, I'll establish something else I noticed in chapter 14. Spoilers ahead:
At the end of the game, you finally get the opportunity to sit in the Flood graveyard without the stress of the storm, and take a moment with Trey's mausoleum if you wish. It's even interactive, letting you get a comment from Hazel and a nice, zoomed-in view of what it says. But if you look closely, you'll notice that there is an owl head at the top of the Flood family crest. (This is theoretically also visible on things like, say, the fancy plates you can see at other points in the game. But it would be too small to make out on those, unless you knew to look.)
After this, you head into the mansion proper. And perched near the broken wall as you exit the graveyard? Is an owl. One that slowly, slowly flies ahead of you, escorting you all the way to the mansion itself. At this point, if you hadn't guessed earlier in the game, it becomes clear that this owl—the one that had landed on the balcony railing when you first hear the strands call to Hazel, and indeed, can occasionally be found flying ahead of you on your path throughout the story—is Trey. Or rather, his spirit, manifested in the form of an owl. It's a lovely little detail, having him help Hazel in what ways he can, while she searches for Lacey.
EDIT: I replayed chapter 1 to grab some extra screenshots for a pair of posts I'm working on (about when SoM takes place), and need to add this detail that I'd forgotten. As Hazel goes through the cemetery on her way to the Flood mansion during the storm, she pauses a moment to talk to Trey. She ends by saying: "I'm so scared for mama. Dad, if you're up there… keep her safe." That quote, in combination with the owl head on the crest? There's no doubt in my mind now that the owl guiding Hazel is definitely Trey. Except maybe in chapter 7, as noted below. Molly's already looking after Lacey, so Trey does his best to get Hazel to her, and of course sticks by her all the way to the end.
EDIT 2: there are also two small rabbits flanking the owl head that I could not see on the mausoleum, but noticed when I found a post from a dev on artstation that includes the Flood family crest (among other things from chapter 6). The rabbits are certainly nods to Bunny, or (in universe) why she was named that...though one might also argue that Hazel could be one of them, since Roux calls her "rabbit" in a note in chapter 13.
Now, with that said, some of the owls in the game are probably just owls. But while I was thinking about things, as I said at the start of this post, it occurred to me...there might be one other owl that had very similar significance.
Granted, this could just be a normal owl. The sign next to the stick tent for the Mississippi State National Forest Laurent's Camp has an owl as its logo. And Laurent himself became an owl, of sorts. So there are plenty of reasons for the animal that shows up in his memories to be an owl! However, given that the game establishes a different owl as Trey...it could very well be that this owl was Laurent's mom, Thea. But poor Laurent, he had no idea. He was too hurt to let her watch over him from so close, to keep him company. And oh, how it hurts my heart. At the same time...I wonder whether the owl you see in chapter 7 is still Trey? Or if perhaps Thea is the one acting as a guide in the dark forest, still close enough to keep an eye on her son, while the Strands whisper louder and more often than any other chapter...
EDIT 2: the artstation post I mentioned in my other edit above also includes the photos Bunny had a detective take of Laurent. In a detail too hard to see in-game, in the photo with him walking up the stairs to the Juke Joint? There is an owl to his left, staring straight at the camera. I think that lends itself well to my theory that the owl in this chapter is Thea instead of Trey, and in this photo she is staring real hard at the detective...or through the photo at Bunny herself.
A bonus observation, while I'm here:
This is the boat Laurent would go fishing in as a kid, to get them dinner when his dad fell into depression and couldn't manage. (This memory gets me right in the heart, too. Young Laurent is so small, alone in that boat.) Most of the color scheme of the Rougarou is pretty self-explanatory—red muscle and white bone, reflected in his wings, feathers embroidered with eyes almost like a moth's eyespots. But the little bit of green kept puzzling me...until I ran across this boat. That's why his smaller secondary wings have green in them, and why their embroidery is more rudimentary. Hidden under his fabricated outer layer of fancy suit-like wings, under his normal put-together-adult appearance, is the lingering echo of a hurt little kid who had to grow up too fast.
