Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat Read Free Book Online

play the tail-squeeze game.
    After first making sure Mutt was really fast asleep, Wol would begin to stalk the old dog the way a cat will stalk a bird. He always did it on foot; I think because he felt it wouldn’t be playing fair to use his wings. Starting from the front porch, Wol would sneak across the lawn moving so slowly and carefully he hardly seemed to move at all.
    If Mutt happened to raise his head he would see Wol standing stock-still on the grass and staring innocently up at the sky, as if he were wondering whether it was going to rain. After a long, suspicious look at Wol, Mutt’s eyelids would begin to droop, his head would sag, and soon he would be fast asleep again. He snored, too, and as soon as the snores started, Wol would continue his slow and careful approach.
    Sometimes it took Wol an hour or more to cross the lawn; but he did it so quietly and cautiously that Mutt never really had a chance.
    When he had sneaked up close enough, Wol wouldraise one big foot and—very, very gently—lower it over the end of Mutt’s long and bushy tail. Then Wol would let out a piercing scream and at the same moment he would give the tail a good hard squeeze.

    Poor Mutt would leap straight into the air, yelping with surprise and pain. By the time he got his bearings and was ready to take a bite out of Wol, the owl would have flownto the limb of a nearby tree from which he would peer down at Mutt as much as to say: “Good heavens! What a terrible nightmare you must have been having!”
    Mutt would roar and froth around the tree, daring Wol to come down and fight like a dog. Then Wol would make things even worse by closing his eyes and pretending to go sound asleep.
    Although Wol loved practical jokes, the funny thing was that he never really harmed other animals if he could help it. Of course, if something tried to hurt him— that was different. Then Wol could be dangerous. But he certainly wasn’t the fierce and bloodthirsty kind of bird that owls are supposed to be. He wouldn’t even go hunting on his own; if a gopher or a white rat happened to get loose on the lawn, he wouldn’t touch it. However, there was one kind of animal he would attack, and that was a skunk.
    It seems that all horned owls just naturally hate skunks, though no one knows the reason why. What’s more, horned owls are the only things I know of that will eat a skunk, and they even seem to like the taste.
    Our house in Saskatoon stood close to the river, and along the bank of the river was a regular jungle of bushes and poplar trees which made an ideal place for skunks to live. Because they didn’t have any enemies in town, the riverbank skunks had become so cocky they would strollalong the sidewalk in front of our place as boldly as if they owned it.
    That was before Wol came to live with us.
    Cocky as ever, one of the riverbank skunks decided to take a walk down Crescent Avenue one summer evening just after Wol had learned to fly. The skunk came strutting along the sidewalk quite sure nothing in the world would dare to bother him. He ambled along, taking his own time, until he got under the overhanging branches of our poplar trees…
    Mother and Dad and I were having dinner. The dining room windows were open because it had been such a hot day. All of a sudden there was a great swooooosh of wings—and there, on the window sill, sat Wol. Before any of us had time to move, he gave a leap and landed on the floor beside my chair. And he hadn’t come empty-handed. Clutched in his talons was an enormous skunk. The skunk was dead, but that didn’t help matters much because, before he died, he had managed to soak himself and Wol with his own special brand of perfume.
    “Hoo-hoohoohoo-HOO!” Wol said proudly.
    Which probably meant: “Mind if I join you? I’ve brought my supper with me.”
    Nobody stopped to answer. We three people were already stampeding through the door of the dining room, coughingand choking. Wol had to eat his dinner by