few pin-feathers and snap their beaks.

They were fat as two aldermen; and no wonder. Placed around the edge
of the big nest were a red squirrel, a rat, a chicken, a few frogs'
legs, and a rabbit. Fine fare that, at eighty feet from the ground.
Kookooskoos had had good hunting. All the game was partly eaten,
showing I had disturbed their dinner; and only the hinder parts were
left, showing that owls like the head and brains best. I left them
undisturbed and came away; for I wanted to watch the young grow--which
they did marvelously, and were presently learning to hoot. But I have
been less merciful to the great owls ever since, thinking of the
enormous destruction of game represented in raising two or three such
young savages, year after year, in the same swamp.

Once, at twilight, I shot a big owl that was sitting on a limb facing
me, with what appeared to be an enormously long tail hanging below the
limb. The tail turned out to be a large mink, just killed, with a
beautiful skin that put five dollars into a boy's locker. Another time
I shot one that sailed over me; when he came down, there was a ruffed
grouse, still living, in his claws. Another time I could not touch one
that I had killed for the overpowering odor which was in his feathers,
showing that _Mephitis_, the skunk, never loses his head when
attacked. But Kookooskoos, like the fox, cares little for such
weapons, and in the spring, when game is scarce, swoops for and kills
a skunk wherever he finds him prowling away from his den in the
twilight.

The most savage bit of his hunting that I ever saw was one dark winter
afternoon, on the edge of some thick woods. I was watching a cat, a
half-wild creature, that was watching a red squirrel making a great
fuss over some nuts which he had hidden, and which he claimed somebody
had stolen. Somewhere behind us, Kookooskoos was watching from a pine
tree. The squirrel was chattering in the midst of a whirlwind of
leaves and empty shells which he had thrown out on the snow from under
the wall; behind him the cat, creeping nearer and nearer, had crouched
with blazing eyes and quivering muscles, her whole attention fixed on
the spring, when broad wings shot silently over my hiding place and
fell like a shadow on the cat. One set of strong claws gripped her
behind the ears; the others were fastened like a vise in the spine.
Generally one such grip is enough; but the cat was strong, and at the
first touch sprang away. In