"You must not tell the serpents that I am watching for Wolf," said Manabozho.
But Kingfisher was looking in the mirror of the lake, admiring his new necklace, so he did not hear the great spirit's words. Manabozho became suspicious and seized the little bird by the head. Kingfisher wriggled and twisted, and finally freed himself from the hand of the angry Manabozho and flew away. But the feathers on Kingfisher's head were very much ruffled in the struggle, and he has worn them so ever since; also, to this day, he wears Manabozho's gift of the beautiful white necklace.
OWL WISDOM
Frances Wright
Once upon a time the owls were the largest and the most dull and stupid of all the birds of the air. While the eagle soared above the mountain's crest to hail the sun before his rising, and the lark carolled his matin in the blue fields of ether, the owls were snoring; when the thrush and the blackbird, retreating from the heat of noon, filled the deep groves with their melody, the owls snored out the sylvan concert; and when the soft cushat poured his evening tale of love into the ear of his listening mate, the owls were still snoring in their unbroken and dreamless sleep.
It chanced, most naturally, that when towards midnight, the heavy, big-headed creatures half-opened their stupid eyes, and half-stretched first one drowsy pinion and then the other, that their stomachs craved for food; whereupon, after much yawning and stretching, they dragged themselves from their holes and went prowling after bats and mice in the dark. Tired with their hunt, and not over content with their supper, which was both coarse and scanty, they thus laid their heads together, and, however dull by nature, and doubly dulled by sleep, they were for once stimulated by hunger and disappointment to something like ingenuity.
Said an old gray-headed owl: "This barbarous exercise ill suits with my years and my gravity."
"And this barbarous fare," said a pert, idle youngster, "ill suits with the youthful activity of my stomach."
"I'll stake my reputation upon it," said a third, shaking his dull head, "but that proud, self-sufficient gormandizing eagle has eaten a whole sheep for his supper."
"And I'll stake mine," yawned a fourth, "that his first cousin, the vulture, and his second cousin, the hawk, have feasted; the one on a fat lamb, and the other on a hen and chickens."
"Chut," said the first old grey-beard, "we'll feast ere long on sheep, lamb, hen, chickens, and all; ay! mayhap on the eagle's own little ones, to say nothing of his cousins."