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 strove to bear her up and fly off with her, but she was too heavy a burden for him, and with a mighty flapping the two came slowly to the ground.

This was not exactly what the marauder wanted, but he was not one to lose any opportunity for destruction. He bit and tore with that deadly sickle of his beak till he had decapitated his massive prize; and though he was by no means hungry, he broke up and swallowed most of the head, for the sake of the brains. In the meantime the other turkey, still resting on her perch, had kept on uttering her foolish Kwit-kwit, kwit-kwit, as if begging to know what all the excitement meant. She all too soon found out. Glancing up from his sanguinary meal, as if angered by her stupid noise, the great owl fixed her for a second or two with his glassy stare. Then he shot up through the gloom till he was a few feet above the anxious chatterer, pounced upon her vindictively, and swept her, strangled and futilely fluttering, from her perch. Her life promptly went out through her gaping beak; but she, too, proved too heavy for her destroyer's wing power; and despite his determined flapping, he was borne slowly to the ground. He tore off her silly head, in sheer wantonness of destruction. Then, wiping his beak on her still quivering body, he