Bloody. Weird.

We've had wet weather and a lot of deer flies have hatched out, so I just now took my walk in the late evening hoping to miss the worst of them. My deer-fly-catching hair still caught (and I killed) six of them.

When I got down to where the path loops, I had to pass a smallish juniper bush.

As I passed the bush, I heard a rustle in the chokecherry tree behind and above it, and looked up just in time to - -

- - almost get hit in the hand by half a dead rabbit!

Crivens!

"Hang on to your dinner, would you!" I yelled at the vanished bird that must have dropped it.

I suspected a young hawk, or anyway some sort of raptor, so I looked around as I kept walking, and within ten yards or so I heard a loud "Eeeeep! Eeeep!" and ahead of me I saw a big grayish owl perched on a skinny dead tree.

"Don't yell at me, I didn't drop it!" I told it. No wonder I didn't hear anything fly out of the tree. Owls are the quietest flying birds there are.

Cornell's lovely "All About Birds" site even has the call of a juvenile great horned owl, Bubo virginianus, near the end of the recording.

That goes on the list of weird things that have happened to me, like removing a baby woodchuck or a half-frozen opossum from the fenced yard.

At least it didn't drop half a dead skunk on me.