“Checking himself abruptly, the hawk flew on over the tops of the hillocks, making unexpected zigzag rushes to right and left.  But wherever he went, there the villagers had vanished, almost as if the wind of his approach had whisked them away.  Baffled and indignant, he at last gave up the hope of a dinner of prairie dog, and dropped on a small rattler which was too sluggish from overeating to have noticed that there was any particular excitement in the village.  Gripping the reptile in inexorable talons just behind its head, the great bird bit its backbone through, carried it to the nearest hillock, and proceeded to tear it to pieces.  Calmly he made his meal, glancing around with eyes glassy hard and fiercely arrogant, while from every burrow in the neighborhood round, innocent heads peered forth, barking insult and defiance.  They were willing enough that the rattler should be destroyed, but they wished the hawk to understand that his continued presence in the villages was not desired.  Of the two foes, they preferred the rattler, to whose methods of administering fate they had grown so accustomed that they could regard them with something like philosophy, especially where only a neighborhood was concerned.  But the hawk’s attack was so abrupt and violent as to be upsetting to the nerves of the whole village.

“When the hawk had finished his meal and wiped his beak on the hard earth he flew off; and long before he was out of sight all the furry householders were out on top of their hillocks and chattering at the tops of their voices about the affair.  The Little Villager himself, having been first to give the alarm, was particularly excited and important.  But even he managed to calm himself down after a while.  And then, feeling hungry from excess of emotion, he descended from his hillock and fell to nibbling grass stems.

“He had been but a few minutes at this engrossing occupation when from the door of a nearby burrow popped suddenly a small brown owl.  The bird appeared with a haste which seemed to ruffle its dignity considerably.  It was followed at once by its mate.  The two blinked in the strong light, and turned to peer down the hole from which they emerged, as if expecting to be followed.  They were snapping their strong hooked beaks like castanets, and hissing indignantly.  But nothing more came out of the hole.  They glared about them for several minutes with their immense, round, fiercely bright eyes.  Then, lifting themselves like blown thistledown, with one waft of their broad, downy wings they floated over to the door of the Little Villager’s burrow.  They looked at it.  They looked at the Little Villager where he sat holding a half-nibbled grass stem between his paws.  They snapped their beaks once more, with angry decision, and with two or three awkward, scuttling steps, like a parrot walking on the floor of his cage, they plunged down, quite uninvited, into the burrow.