OWLS. 
JOHN WINTHROP SCOTT. 
BIRDS that fly in the night and 
whose wings move so smoothly 
through the air that they make 
no noise act much like the bur- 
glar that gets into your house quietly 
when you are asleep to steal your 
money. But the owl is not a burglar. 
He is the friend of man. There is no 
other bird that does the farmer so much 
good as the owl. The owl comes out 
in the dark to get the small animals 
that are out at that time stealing things 
from the farmer. So we may call the 
owl the night watchman of the farm. 
He sometimes comes out in the day- 
time, but most owls prefer the night or 
at least a dark day. 
The owl has been called a wise bird 
for the same reason that some men are 
thought to be wise — he looks wise. 
One reason he looks so steadily at you 
that you think he is studying you is be- 
cause the light is so strong in the day- 
time that his sight is bad. But the owl 
is not as wise as he is said to be. He 
does some foolish things as well as 
other birds. In fact he is sometimes 
more foolish than any other bird would 
be in the same place. One owl was 
known to sit for more than a half day 
under a leaking water tap. The water 
fell at the rate of twenty drops a min- 
ute right down upon the owl's head, 
and yet he was not wise enough to 
move out of the wet. 
All owls are not too stupid to learn. 
Puffy, a tame young owl, caught and 
ate a two-pound pullet. An old hen 
afterwards took a fancy to his perch. 
She went in and gave the little owl a 
sound whipping, and after that shared 
the perch with him. He never forgot 
the lesson the hen had given him and 
always treated her well. 
Owls have a way of hiding from 
notice by making believe they are 
something besides owls. They can 
move their feathers so as to change 
their looks entirely. The great horned 
owl sometimes makes himself a fright- 
ful mass of feathers a yard wide, and 
at other times he seems to be a very 
slim bird, too thin for an owl. Puffy 
once got away from his master. He 
flew to the top of a stump and sat like 
a stake for an hour while his master 
looked all round the place for him 
without knowing there was a bird on 
the stump in plain sight. Owls draw 
the feathers away from their mouths in 
an odd way when they eat, and when 
walking softly to steal upon a mouse 
tuck up their feathers as a lady lifts her 
skirts. 
Owls are fond of mice. A boy who 
had a half-grown barn owl tried him 
one day to see how many mice he 
would eat. The first four mice went 
down the owl's throat very quickly. 
Then number five and number six were 
eaten in a short time. Number seven 
did not go down quite as rapidly and 
number eight was slower still. Num- 
ber nine was taken greedily, but the 
owl could not swallow it. The tail 
hung out of the owl's mouth for awhile 
before it could be fairly counted. Then 
no more were eaten till about three 
hours after, when the owl was pleased 
to take four more mice. 
The gopher is a small animal that 
does damage to growing things. It 
digs up corn after it is planted, and it 
gnaws the roots of fruit trees so as to 
hurt them badly. Owls catch gophers 
and eat them. This is one reason why 
the farmer likes the owl so well. Barn 
owls sometimes roost with pigeons, but 
they are good friends. We know they 
do not eat the pigeons because owls 
swallow their food whole and have to 
throw up the bones afterwards, and it 
| is known that the owls living with the 
i pigeons throw up bones of rats and 
mice but not of pigeons. 
Sometimes so many mice have come 
upon the farms in England that it looked 
as if everything would be eaten up by 
them. But a great many owls always 
came when the mice were so thick and 
helped the farmers save their crops. One 
owl was seen to make, in thirty min- 
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