OWL LIFE 



WHEN the silence of the summer night is disturbed 

 only by the ethereal music of myriads of insects, 

 and by occasional breezes rustling through the 

 leaves — and the stealthy movements of nocturnal feeders on 

 the herbage beneath — 'tis then that the ghost walks — then 

 that the weird wail of the owl is heard boding misfortune to 

 the vast army of rats and mice, bats and moles, beetles and 

 crickets, and other small night prowlers who fare forth at that 

 time to seek their food. To them her supernatural, startling 

 cry is a portent of woe, a certain harbinger of approaching 

 death — a death that must occur that the owl and her family 

 may live, for it is on these small creatures that she feeds and it 

 is these that she carries to her young. 



In the early twilight, the hour when moths fly hum- 

 ming, the owl and her mate leave the woodland retreat where 

 they have spent the day in slothful slumber and go forth 

 into more open places, each seeking some solitary post of 

 vantage where she perches to watch for tiny field mice who 

 may be walking abroad in the twilight in quest of succulent 

 roots and grasses; or for unwary young rabbits who have 

 come out to nibble the plantains; or possibly a toad who 

 may be dampening his warty back in the dewy herbage. 



As one of these approaches, silently sits the owl, ap- 

 parently dozing, but really with every sense alert, till the 



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