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I took him out of the stove and fed him, and that’s how I come to have an owl.” He paused and looked again at the crane. “Only I never had to catch one.” He kept rubbing his hands together.
    “If it was me, I’d just rush up and grab.”
    “He ain’t scared of us so maybe we can just ease up.” His grandfather finished rubbing his hands and both of them looked at the crane.
    The woods around them were quiet and it was beginning to get hot. Sammy felt lightheaded from hunger and the heat. His arms and legs were tingling. He suddenly thought that he would like to lie down in the shade and rest before doing anything about the crane.
    He noticed that his grandfather, strong as an old tree, was starting to move closer. Apparently his grandfather never got hot or tired or hungry. “Just don’t make any sharp quick movements. That’s the main thing,” his grandfather said.
    Sammy thought he could not make a sharp quick movement if his life depended on it. He said, “I’ll try not to.” He took another step along with his grandfather, putting his feet in his grandfather’s footprints.
    The leaves of the trees overhead began to move with a sudden breeze, but below, where Sammy was, the air was as hot and still as an attic. A gnat flew around his face and Sammy brushed it away.
    His grandfather turned his grizzled face to Sammy. He said, “Well, we might as well do something, even if it’s wrong. We can’t count on him standing there forever.”
    “No,” Sammy said.
    His grandfather wiped his hands on his jacket. Sammy could see the intensity, the purpose in the set of his grandfather’s shoulders, and he knew that if by some terrible chance the crane started to run away, his grandfather would run after him. His grandfather would run for the rest of this day and into the night if necessary. The crane would not get away. His grandfather could run for a week, a month, a year.
    “Try to get him on the first grab,” Sammy suggested. He thought that his grandfather would expect him to run along, to chase the crane until he dropped with fatigue. Sammy thought that would be about ten steps.
    “I’ll get him,” his grandfather said, “one way or another.”
    And Sammy said tiredly to himself, “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

THE CAPTURE
    H IS GRANDFATHER TOOK ANOTHER step toward the crane. Sammy went along, keeping right at his grandfather’s elbow. The closer they got, the bigger the crane looked and the sharper the beak. Sammy said, “He sure is big for a crane.” He looked up at his grandfather. “Wouldn’t you say?”
    His grandfather shook his head. “I seen a whooping crane at a zoo in Louisiana one time and it was about as tall as me. It would make two of that one.”
    “Yeah, but that was a whooping crane,” Sammy said quickly. “This is big for a regular crane.”
    “A sandhill crane.” His grandfather looked beyond the crane into the trees. He seemed to want to put off the actual capture of the crane as long as possible. He said, “I remember I got myself a bag of salted peanuts that day and the whooping crane came up to the wire fence and I threw him peanuts and he caught them in the air. A lady that was standing by told me that whooping crane would eat almost anything you threw him—hotdogs, hamburgers, french fries. Just toss it and he’d catch it. You don’t see many of them whooping cranes any more.”
    He brought himself to the present with a start. Then slowly he began to take off his jacket. The railroad jacket was old, the lining was worn out, and the back of the jacket was so thin Sammy could see the sun shining through.
    His grandfather shook out the jacket and held it up in front of him like an apron. His arms were thin and frail-looking compared to the rest of his body. They were as white as if they had never been exposed to the sun.
    “What are you going to do?” Sammy asked.
    “Well, I’m going to try to ease up on him and get this jacket over his head. There’s