Maggie's Farm

North of Williams, Arizona, near the Grand Canyon, I witnessed a Red Tailed Hawk attacking a Great Horned Owl that had just caught a jack rabbit.

I raced to the scene. Not to intervene, but to inspect the carnage. What I found was shocking.

The owl was dead. It died on its back trying to defend against the hawk's talons. As the puncture wounds on its chest and neck testified, it failed in its defense.

True to owls, the bird had enough time after the chase to eat the rabbit's head. It was neatly detached from the cadaver's neck with surgical precision.

The rabbit's remains lie untouched. My appearance spooked the hawk, and it flew off empty handed.

Out of sheer respect for the great Cataract Canyon Owl, I returned soon with my sharpened lops and swiftly removed one of his talons. It is truly one of nature's most precise puncture weapons. It doesn't just seize prey, the talons pierce vital organs and gather them up, as the sharp, curved thorns converge in the horny palm of the owl's foot when the leg muscles contract.

The dead owl's desiccated tarsal device lives forever in a birch box now, as a mummified ornament to my life in the bleak, Northern Arizona wilderness.