Oohoomisew was a huge snow owl. He was the patriarch among all the owls
of Pierrot's trapping domain. He was so old that he was almost blind,
and therefore he never hunted as other owls hunted. He did not hide
himself in the black cover of spruce and balsam tops, or float softly
through the night, ready in an instant to swoop down upon his prey. His
eyesight was so poor that from a spruce top he could not have seen a
rabbit at all, and he might have mistaken a fox for a mouse.

So old Oohoomisew, learning wisdom from experience, hunted from ambush.
He would squat on the ground, and for hours at a time he would remain
there without making a sound and scarcely moving a feather, waiting
with the patience of Job for something to eat to come his way. Now and
then he had made mistakes. Twice he had mistaken a lynx for a rabbit,
and in the second attack he had lost a foot, so that when he slumbered
aloft during the day he clung to his perch with one claw. Crippled,
nearly blind, and so old that he had long ago lost the tufts of
feathers over his ears, he was still a giant in strength, and when he
was angry, one could hear the snap of his beak twenty yards away.

For three nights he had been unlucky, and tonight he had been
particularly unfortunate. Two rabbits had come his way, and he had
lunged at each of them from his cover. The first he had missed
entirely; the second had left with him a mouthful of fur--and that was
all. He was ravenously hungry, and he was gritting his bill in his bad
temper when he heard Baree approaching.

Even if Baree could have seen under the dark bush ahead, and had
discovered Oohoomisew ready to dart from his ambush, it is not likely
that he would have gone very far aside. His own fighting blood was up.
He, too, was ready for war.