[Darwin]

My wife developed a working relationship with one of the lesser horned owls that was really a hoot. As she is a night owl, so to speak, and didn't work, so she usually was the one to go outside with a shotgun when some critter (usually skunk) set the chickens off in the hen house. When she managed to shoot one of the critters, she would leave the body insitu for me to dispose of the next morning. After a while, the bodies started disappearing; the mystery was solved one evening when, after she ventilated a skunk, an owl swooped out of a nearby tree and carried off the carcass. After the owl developed enough trust, it would even flush skunks out of the high grass so she could get off a clear shot. It seems that lesser horned owls are one of the few predators of skunks.....which is just fine by us.