I thought she deserved it, so I said nothing, and the last I saw of them, they were walking down the beach together, wing to wing, coquetting like lovers on a moonlight night. I never shot any more Ducks, and refused, ever afterward, to wear Duck trousers in the Summer time. These garments are really a luxury, being made of canvasback Duck.
“Coquetting like lovers on a moonlight night.”]
In the Winter, the Owls nearly starve, and get so thin that they cannot fly. Their big wings overbalance them, like a craft carrying too much sail, and the wind carries them in every direction. In the Winter, if the wind is right, you can stand on the beach any day and more Owls than you can ever hope to study will blow almost into your arms. They are not good eating, however, for in the early Spring and late Fall they live mainly upon mussels and this makes their bodies too muscular to carve.
They get so hungry in the Winter that they will even eat Cats. In this way I once lost a very pretty black and white pussy to whom I was much attached. A red Squirrel had hidden some walnuts in a little cave near my cabin door, and while he was digging them up, the Cat saw him and began to stalk him, merely by way of amusement. Hoot-Mon swooped down upon poor pussy, and she nearly scratched his eyes out. Both were game, but he finally killed her with a terrific blow on the head, such as he once gave me, and bore her away in triumph to his nest.
I was inconsolable, and with the fine instinct of the animal, Hoot-Mon must have known it. Two weeks afterward I found on my doorstep one morning a small, soft, furry ball. I unrolled it and discovered that it was the complexion of my lost pet, nicely prepared, a necklace made of her delicate teeth, pierced and strung on a fine wire, with a locket made of her claws. It was very pretty and touching. I would have been glad to have had one of her eyes, for a cat’s-eye scarf-pin, but that was too much to expect. I had long known that Owls make an ointment of Cats’ eyes, with which they rub their own. It is this that enables them to see in the dark.
Once I had a very peculiar adventure. I had caught a Rat in my cabin and had buried the body just outside, in some sand. In the night I was awakened by a prolonged clucking and a long drawn _whoo-oo-oo_, the characteristic hunting note of the Owl. Fortunately it was bright moonlight.