It Was An Immense Vacant Place
Containing Nothing But A Number Of Empty Cases On One Side Of The
Floor And Empty Flour-Barrels, Standing Upright, On The Other.
My
father began walking about among the cases, and by and by called me to
look at a young pigeon, apparently just killed, which he had found in
one of the empty boxes.
Now, how came it to be there? he asked. Rats,
no doubt, but how strange and almost incredible it seemed that a rat,
however big, had been able to scale the pigeon-house, kill a pigeon
and drag it back a distance of twenty-five yards, then mount with it
to the loft, and after all that labour to leave it uneaten! The wonder
grew when he began to find more young pigeons, all young birds almost
of an age to have left the nest, and only one or two out of half a
dozen with any flesh eaten.
Here was an enemy to the dovecote who went about at night and did his
killing quietly, unseen by any one, and was ten times more destructive
than the falcon, who killed her adult old pigeon daily in sight of all
the world and in a magnificent way!
I left him pondering over the mystery, gradually working himself up
into a rage against rats, and went off to explore among the empty
barrels standing upright on the other side of the loft.
"Another pigeon!" I shouted presently, filled with pride at the
discovery and fishing the bird up from the bottom. He came over to me
and began to examine the dead bird, his wrath still increasing; then I
shouted gleefully again, "Another pigeon!" and altogether I shouted
"Another pigeon!" about five times, and by that time he was in a quite
furious temper. "Rats - rats!" he exclaimed, "killing all these pigeons
and dragging them up here just to put them away in empty barrels - who
ever heard of such a thing!" No stronger language did he use. Like the
vicar's wonderfully sober-minded daughter, as described by Marjory
Fleming, "he never said a single dam," for that was the sort of man he
was, but he went back fuming to his boxes.
Meanwhile I continued my investigations, and by and by, peering into
an empty barrel received one of the greatest shocks I had ever
experienced. Down at the bottom of the barrel was a big brown-and-
yellow mottled owl, one of a kind I had never seen, standing with its
claws grasping a dead pigeon and its face turned up in alarm at mine.
What a face it was! - a round grey disc, with black lines like spokes
radiating from the centre, where the beak was, and the two wide-open
staring orange-coloured eyes, the wheel-like head surmounted by a pair
of ear-or horn-like black feathers! For a few moments we stared at one
another, then recovering myself I shouted, "Father - an owl!" For
although I had never seen its like before I knew it was an owl.
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