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Updated: May 20, 2025
I went over on the instant, and found a young porcupine in the bushes where the owl had swooped, while two more were eating lily stems farther along the shore. Evidently Kookooskoos, who swoops by instinct at everything that moves, must be taught by wiser heads the wisdom of letting certain things severely alone.
They did not see me, but were only scared into action as a branch, upon which I stood looking for my partridges, gave way beneath my feet and let me down with a great crash under the fallen tree. There, looking out, I could see them perfectly, while Kookooskoos himself could hardly have seen me. At the first crack they all jumped like Jack-in-a-box when you touch his spring.
The next morning there was Kookooskoos on the platform, one foot in the trap, at which he was pulling awkwardly. Owls, from their peculiar ways of hunting, are prone to light on stubs and exposed branches; and so Kookooskoos had used my pole as a watch tower before carrying off his game. There is another way in which he is easily fooled.
Kookooskoos was not there. He had heard me coming and slipped away silently. Wishing to be sure the nest was occupied before trying the hard climb, I went away as far as I could see the nest and hid in a thicket. Presently a very large owl came back and stood by the nest. Soon after, a smaller bird, the male, glided up beside her. Then I came on cautiously, watching to see what they would do.
For a few moments there was a desperate battle, fur and feathers flying, the cat screeching like mad, the owl silent as death. Then the great claws did their work. When I straightened up from my thicket, Kookooskoos was standing on his game, tearing off the flesh with his feet, and carrying it up to his mouth with the same movement, swallowing everything alike, as if famished.
If you separate the feathers on Kookooskoos' head, you will find an enormous ear-opening running from above his eye halfway round his face. And the ear within is so marvelously sensitive that it can hear the rustle of a rat in the grass, or the scrape of a sparrow's toes on a branch fifty feet away.
They did not see me, but were only scared into action as a branch, upon which I stood looking for my partridges, gave way beneath my feet and let me down with a great crash under the fallen tree. There, looking out, I could see them perfectly, while Kookooskoos himself could hardly have seen me. At the first crack they all jumped like Jack-in-a-box when you touch his spring.
Other uncanny things had happened since, in the same way, and coupled with a bad accident on the river, which the men thought was an omen, they had put the camp into such a state of superstitious fear that no one ventured alone out of doors after nightfall. I thought of Kookooskoos and my own head, but said nothing. They would only have resented the suggestion.
But they never attacked the feathered robbers, as they had done with the fisher, and, so far as I could see, there was no need. Kookooskoos the owl and Hawahak the hawk might be very hungry; but the sight of those great wings circling over the nest and the shrill cry of defiance in their ears sent them hurriedly away to other hunting grounds.
No one likes to have a good ghost story spoiled; and, besides, where superstition is, there the marvelous is most easily believed. It is only the simple truth that is doubted. So I spent half the night in convincing them that they had been brought up in the woods to be scared by an owl. Poor Kookooskoos! they shot him next night on his watch tower, and nailed him to the camp door as a warning.
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