The photo is oaks and sycamores in the Santa Monica mountains. The post jumps because it was hard to write and, I think, hard to read.

It was two weeks ago that we found the barn owl. He was under an oak, no visible wounds, no trauma, his feathers all intact. It had been a bitterly cold night, one in a series, in fact, and I wondered if that had something to do with his death.

I moved him, put him in a private place in a drift of leaves near a fallen tree. He was so light when I lifted him, still fierce. I worried someone might come along and steal his feathers, so I moved him.

On Monday, like we do every day, like we have done every day for the last six months, the dogs and I, we walked in the oaks. And there was something strange about one of them, a bulge near the base.