jumped up with a yell and
danced a jig in the snow, like a schoolboy. There was no need of
further demonstration with a cap; and nobody volunteered his head for
a final experiment; but all remembered seeing the owl on his nightly
watch, and knew something of his swooping habits. Of course some were
incredulous at first, and had a dozen questions and objections when we
were in camp. No one likes to have a good ghost story spoiled; and,
besides, where superstition is, there the marvelous is most easily
believed. It is only the simple truth that is doubted. So I spent half
the night in convincing them that they _had_ been brought up in the
woods to be scared by an owl.

Poor Kookooskoos! they shot him next night on his watch tower, and
nailed him to the camp door as a warning.

I discovered another curious thing about Kookooskoos that night when I
watched to find out what had struck me. I found out why he hoots.
Sometimes, if he is a young owl, he hoots for practice, or to learn
how; and then he makes an awful noise of it, a rasping screech, before
his voice deepens. And if you are camping near and are new to the
woods, the chances are that you lie awake and shiver; for there is no
other sound like it in the wilderness. Sometimes, when you climb to
his nest, he has a terrifying _hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo_, running up
and down a deep guttural scale, like a fiendish laugh, accompanied by
a vicious snapping of the beak. And if you are a small boy, and it is
towards twilight, you climb down the tree quick and let his nest
alone. But the regular _whooo-hoo-hoo_, _whooo-hoo_, always five
notes, with the second two very short, is a hunting call, and he uses
it to alarm the game. That is queer hunting; but his ears account for
it.

If you separate the feathers on Kookooskoos' head, you will find an
enormous ear-opening running from above his eye halfway round his
face. And the ear within is so marvelously sensitive that it can hear
the rustle of a rat in the grass, or the scrape of a sparrow's toes on
a branch fifty feet away. So he sits on his watch tower, so still that
he is never noticed, and as twilight comes on, when he can see best,
he hoots suddenly and listens. The sound has a muffled quality which
makes it hard to locate, and it frightens every bird and small animal
within hearing; for all know Kookooskoos, and how fierce he is. As the
terrifying sound rolls out of the air so near them, fur and feathers
shiver with frig