In the Winter, the Owls nearly starve, and get so thin that they cannot fly. Their big wings overbalance them, like a craft carrying too much sail, and the wind carries them in every direction. In the Winter, if the wind is right, you can stand on the beach any day and more Owls than you can ever hope to study will blow almost into your arms. They are not good eating, however, for in the early Spring and late Fall they live mainly upon mussels and this makes their bodies too muscular to carve.
They get so hungry in the Winter that they will even eat Cats. In this way I once lost a very pretty black and white pussy to whom I was much attached. A red Squirrel had hidden some walnuts in a little cave near my cabin door, and while he was digging them up, the Cat saw him and began to stalk him, merely by way of amusement. Hoot-Mon swooped down upon poor pussy, and she nearly scratched his eyes out. Both were game, but he finally killed her with a terrific blow on the head, such as he once gave me, and bore her away in triumph to his nest.
I was inconsolable, and with the fine instinct of the animal, Hoot-Mon must have known it. Two weeks afterward I found on my doorstep one morning a small, soft, furry ball. I unrolled it and discovered that it was the complexion of my lost pet, nicely prepared, a necklace made of her delicate teeth, pierced and strung on a fine wire, with a locket made of her claws. It was very pretty and touching. I would have been glad to have had one of her eyes, for a cat’s-eye scarf-pin, but that was too much to expect. I had long known that Owls make an ointment of Cats’ eyes, with which they rub their own. It is this that enables them to see in the dark.
Once I had a very peculiar adventure. I had caught a Rat in my cabin and had buried the body just outside, in some sand. In the night I was awakened by a prolonged clucking and a long drawn whoo-oo-oo, the characteristic hunting note of the Owl. Fortunately it was bright moonlight.
I looked out of my window and there was Hoot-Mon, a big white furry thing, clucking like a Hen and scratching furiously in the sand, which rose in a cloud around him and nearly obscured him from my scientific gaze. My quick, active mind immediately guessed that he was excavating for the Rat, and when the dust subsided, I saw that I was right. He took his prize and hurried away, still clucking. Two weeks later, he brought me the ball representing the inedible portions, but this I threw away, having no sentimental attachment for the Rat.
It is interesting to see Owls eat. When they are very hungry, they are savage about their food and tear it apart like the other wild things, but when their eagerness is partially satisfied, they are as dainty about it as any lady. Once I gave Hoot-Mon a bit of nicely broiled beefsteak and he received it with unmistakable notes of pleasure in his clucking.
With the file which Nature has provided on the inner side of his right leg, he cut it into small, neat morsels and ate it with his left foot as though it were a fork. Afterward he came and wiped his beak upon my handkerchief. He had evidently enjoyed the meal very much and for some days he hung about my camp-fire, watching eagerly for more.
The following week he flew into my presence with a long stake to which a link or two of chain was still attached. I recognised it as the peg to which a neighbour’s Cow was fastened in a distant pasture. He had filed off the chain, dug up the peg, and brought me the beef stake in the hope that I would broil it for him. With gestures I made him understand that, even so, it would not be edible, and he flew away, broken-hearted.
An Owl moves so silently that you can never see him come. Where other Birds have feathers he has hair, and this makes no noise when he moves. You can hear the rustle of a Duck’s wings, the flutter of a Sparrow or a Lark, and the wind fairly screams through the Eagle’s pinions when you spend a dollar, but the breeze makes no more noise blowing through an Owl’s wings than it does in passing over your own head.
Owls are as fond of Rats as Chinamen are. If you can only catch an Owl you will need no Rat-trap, for he will clear the premises of the vermin in no time. I caught Bre’r Hush-wing once when I was a boy and put him into our oat bin. When I went to get him again he was dead from indigestion. I dissected him and found the heads of eighteen Rats in his stomach. The skins of twenty-three more were tacked up around the oat bin with their own claws.