![]() What he finds is nothing he might have imagined, and a few moments later his bloody feathers float down to be followed by another sound, like a satisfied sigh. When the next sound comes, he launches himself into the air, swerving silently around the huge trunks, as he does when he hunts mice or voles or small birds, following the pucker of individual tics to its lively source, exploring into his life's darkness. Something new, something strange, something to make a hunter curious. The owl opens his eyes wide and turns his head backwards, staring at the surrounding shades. ![]() Whatever these climbers are, there are more than a few of them. Silence intervenes, then another seam is ripped softly on one side, then on the other, followed by new silences. If there were eyes to see, they might make out a bearsized shadow, agile as a squirrel, puckering the quiet like an opening zipper, rrrrip up, rrrrip down, high into the trees then down again, disappearing into mist. It is a place of mosses and liverworts and ferns, of filmy green that curtains the branches and cushions the soil, a wet place, a still place.Ī place in which something new is happening. In these woods, bear is the big boy, the top of the chain, but even he goes quietly and mostly by day. In these woods nights are quiet, save for the questing hoot of an owl, the satin stroke of fur against a twig, the tick and rasp of small claws climbing up, clambering down. Above the waves, dripping silver in the moonlight, old trees, giant trees, few now, thrust their heads among low clouds, the moss thick upon their boles and shadow deep around their roots. Tepper Things that go bump in the night Along the Oregon coast an arm of the Pacific shushes softly against rocky shores.
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