I went out one day, with my shovel, and Hoot-Mon followed me, warmly wrapped in his shawl. I chose the lofty stump that was his watch-tower and began to shovel a clear space. He sat on top of it, well out of reach of draughts, and watched me. I intended to keep a free lunch set out here for the Birds.
Round and round I shovelled, keeping always in a circle. Hoot-Mon never took his eyes off me—his devotion was absolutely pathetic. When I had finished, I galloped around the stump a few times to get warm, as it was still bitterly cold.
I began to get dizzy, but I went on faster and faster, for the blood was singing in my pulses and it was good to be alive. I was stopped in my mad rush by the most astounding thing that could have happened.
Hoot-Mon’s head, bleeding profusely, and with the eyes staring from their sockets, fell at my feet. On the stump, still clad in the shawl, was his lifeless body.
I was stunned, and it was more than an hour before I saw how it had happened. It was my own fault; no one but myself was to blame. An Owl will turn his head, but never his body, and Hoot-Mon had followed me around the stump with his fond eyes until he had wrung his own neck.
It was too terrible, and I am not ashamed to say that a man’s salt tears bedewed the downy body of my pet as I lowered him into his grave. I made him a shroud of my only remaining sheet and covered him with my last pillow slip. I did not begrudge them to him in the least, and I still have his red flannel shawl. This pathetic relic will be found by the reader in its proper place in the exhibit.
The shocking occurrence saddened me so much that I gave up my study of Unnatural History and returned to the city, where I speedily found some honest employment which paid me fairly well.
At times, the voices of the wilderness call me, but I dare not go back, lest the old magic of the woods take my spirit into slavery again.
Sometimes, at night, I start from my sleep, thinking that poor Hoot-Mon’s bleeding head is again at my feet. It is a consolation, however, to know that he did not suffer any more than a spring broiler which is prepared for the market, and, after all, it may have been a kinder fate than the one which was waiting for him somewhere in the gloom of the tall pines, for the end of a wild animal is always a tragedy.