But his wife wasn’t paying any attention to him at all. She was leaning over, craning out her neck, cocking her ear. All she answered was: “There he goes now.� After a second she added to herself: “My, but he’s little. I don’t believe he can do it, ever in this world.�
She lit above Killer’s head while he was busy eating the robin
“Do what?� he wanted to know.
“Kill——â€� she hesitated; “kill any one bigger than Tad Coon.â€� She didn’t want him to know it was Watch the Dog and Tommy Peele and Louie Thomson she wanted to get rid of for good and all. She thought to herself: “If only those boys were gone, and the Woodsfolk hadn’t any one to give those nice feasts to them so they’d never get hungry, they’d fight each other again.â€� She didn’t know they really liked living together the way Mother Nature meant them to in the First-Off Beginning. But she knew he’d be scared if she told him that. He was simply foolish about men.
“If he can’t kill them, why are they all so afraid?� he asked.
“That’s so,� she agreed. “I don’t see how he ever fights them, but I s’pose he knows some tricks he doesn’t tell. You wait for me right here.� And down she flew to follow Killer the Weasel to his den.
She lit above Killer’s head while he was busy eating the robin he’d carried home—only one out of all those he left lying dead on the ground beneath the roost. She squirmed out to the very tip end of the branch and watched him every moment while she was talking. “Good morning,â€� she said, for the east was growing light. “I don’t need to ask you how the hunting goes. I see you’ve had a fine night with plenty of robins.â€�
He raised his flat, three-cornered, snaky-head, and his eyes gleamed red in the shadows. “Not so bad,� he answered, and she could hear his tongue rasp his prickly whiskers. “It’s a great game. But I make the most of it, because when the robins nest in a flock it’s a sign they’ll soon be gone. I try to see how many I can kill before they wake up. I’d have broken my record to-night if a piece of bark I was standing on hadn’t broken. Did you hear that last youngster squall out? The whole flock began stirring; the fun is over then.�
The owl’s claws trembled so she had to clamp them tight. To kill when he wasn’t hungry, just for fun! It was enough to make even an owl’s blood run cold. But she kept her beak from clattering and remarked: “Very clever. You’re quieter than I am. I couldn’t help admiring you because I find them almost too big to manage.�