Read Owls in the Family for Free Online Page B

prize.

 
    chapter 7
    When the owls first came to live with us, Mutt didn’t think much of them. He was jealous of all my pets, and he was particularly jealous of the owls because they took up so much of my time.
    He never did get on very well with Wol, but after a few weeks he got so he could tolerate Weeps. I think this was because Weeps was so helpless, and because Mutt had to defend him from other dogs and from the neighborhood cats. And, of course, Weeps got very fond of Mutt, knowing he could depend on the old boy to protect him. Whenever Weeps was let out of his cage he would start searching around for Mutt. Once he spotted him, Weeps would give a little whoop of relief and go scuttling over to his protector’s side. If Mutt was lying down, Weeps would snuggle in between his paws. Sometimes he would get so close that his “horn” feathers would tickle Mutt’s nose, and then Mutt would sneeze and almost blow Weeps over backward.
    If Weeps got to be too much of a nuisance, Mutt would try to hide from him, under the garage. But that wasn’tmuch use. Weeps would squeeze under the garage too. He hated to let Mutt get out of his sight for even a minute.
    Mutt’s relations with Wol were another story. Wol wasn’t afraid of anything that walked, flew or crawled; and that included Mutt. As far as Wol was concerned, old Mutt was something to be teased and pestered, and Wol used to tease the life half out of him.
    Mutt was an absent-minded sort of dog. Instead of burying a bone he didn’t happen to be using at the moment, he would often forget about it and leave it lying on the grass. That was a mistake, because sooner or later Wol would see it, swoop down and carry it off. It wasn’t that Wol liked bones himself (not having any teeth, he couldn’t chew them), he just liked to take them away from Mutt. Once he had the bone, he would put it somewhere where Mutt could see it or smell it—but couldn’t reach it. Sometimes he would put the bone in the crotch of a tree just high enough so Mutt couldn’t jump up and get it, or sometimes he would hide it in the gutters of the porch roof so that the nice rich bone smell would drift down and torment Mutt until he was nearly crazy.
    Another of Wol’s tricks was stealing Mutt’s dinner. Mutt used to be fed on the back porch, about five o’clock each afternoon. When Wol was feeling particularly bored or ornery, he would play the dinner-stealing game. Havingwaited until Mutt started eating, Wol would scoot around to the front of the house and set up such a ruckus that it sounded like two dogfights and a catfight all happening at once. Mutt always fell for it. As soon as he heard the row he would come tearing around the corner, woof-woof-woofing , and ready for trouble. But while he was peering around in his shortsighted way, to see where the trouble was, Wol would have flown over the top of the house and be gobbling down Mutt’s dinner on the back porch. When Mutt got back and found the plate empty he would look very puzzled. Being absent-minded, he couldn’t always remember whether he had finished his dinner or not. All he knew was that he still felt hungry.
    But Wol’s favorite game with Mutt was the tail-squeeze.
    Mutt was already a fairly old dog when the owls came to live with us, and during the heat of the summer afternoons he liked to have a snooze under the poplar trees in our front yard. He had hollowed out a bed for himself in the moist earth beneath the trees where he could lie in comfort until the sun started to go down and the air began to get a little cooler.
    Wol, on the other hand, never seemed to sleep at all, although according to the bird books horned owls are supposed to sleep all day and hunt all night. Perhaps becauseWol had never read those books he was just as active in the daytime as at night, and maybe more so.
    On summer days, when I was away somewhere and there were no kids around to play with, Wol would get bored. That was usually when he would