> Later from the warm house window I watched a Douglas squirrel
> scamper across
> the snow, then go into high gear, full speed into the shrubs as a
> barred owl
> stooped down on it. I went back outside and the owl was perched low
> in a
> cedar, no squirrel in talon, so I assumed it missed that opportunity.

Yesterday afternoon I heard a sudden, steady series of raspy squawks
of desperation coming from the other side of our twelve-foot-tall,
several hundred-foot-long laurel hedge here in the Snoqualmie Valley
between Woodinville and Duvall. Thinking that some raptor or other
might have grabbed one of our Sebastopol geese (although this sound
was decidedly ungooselike), our nine-year-old son and I scurried our
way through the dense thicket, hoping to come to the aid of whatever
creature lay on the other side.

After looking and listening carefully, we quickly discovered the
source of those distress calls -- as a red-tailed hawk scrabbled a
rather hasty exit out of an enormous adjacent cedar tree. A lone
young barn owl, who had been quietly roosting in the midst of those
low-lying boughs, looked over at us miserably and obviously still in
shock. Either wing was splayed at odd angles within the thick
branchwork of the boughs, and neither my son nor I were at all
certain that this fellow was going to be all right.

We resolved to check back within fifteen minutes (after finishing the
shepherding tasks we'd originally set out to do in the first place).
When we came back to that same spot, peer as we might, there was no
sign of the owl, and although we'd both taken turns keeping one eye
out for him, there had been no sign either of the hawk (or anything
else) returning for the owl during those intervening fifteen minutes.

We assumed then that we may have interrupted the hawk early enough in
his attack to have afforded a moment's saving grace for the young
barn owl.