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 a moment the owl was after her, floating, hovering above, till the right moment came, when he dropped and struck again.  Then the cat whirled and fought like a fury.  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.

Over them the squirrel, which had whisked up a tree at the first alarm, was peeking with evil eyes over the edge of a limb, snickering at the blood-stained snow and the dead cat, scolding, barking, threatening the owl for having disturbed the search for his stolen walnuts.

I caught that same owl soon after in a peculiar way.  A farmer near by told me that an owl was taking his chickens regularly.  Undoubtedly the bird had been driven southward by the severe winter, and had not taken up regular hunting grounds until he caught the cat.  Then came the chickens.  I set up a pole, on the top of which was nailed a bit of board for a platform.  On the platform was fastened a small steel trap, and under it hung a dead chicken.  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.