The owls' cages proper are away behind the llamas' house, and here you may study owl nature in plenty; and you may observe the owls, like people sitting through a long sermon, affecting various concealments and excuses for going to sleep in the daytime. The milky eagle-owl pretends to be waiting for a friend who never keeps his appointment. You come upon him as he is dozing away quietly; he sees you just between his eyelids, and at once stares angrily down the path as if he were sick of waiting, and the other owl already half an hour overdue. Of course there is no owl coming, so he shakes his head testily and half shuts his eyes. If you go away then, he goes to sleep again. If you stay, he presently makes another pretence of pulling out his watch and wondering if that owl is ever coming. He has practised the transparent deception so long that he does it now mechanically, and sleeps, I believe, or nearly so, through the whole process. The oriental owl does it rather differently. He doesn't open his eyes when you first wake him--this in order to give greater verisimilitude to his pretence of profound meditation; he wishes you to understand that it is not your presence that causes him to open his eyes, but the natural course of his philosophical speculations. As a pundit, he disdains to appear to observe you; so he gazes solemnly at a vast space with nothing whatever for its centre. He sees you, but he knows you for a creature that never carries raw meat with it, like a keeper; a creature beneath the notice of _Bubo orientalis_. [Illustration: MILKY REPOSE.] [Illustration: IS HE COMING?] [Illustration: WHAT A NUISANCE!] As a song-bird, the owl is not a conspicuous success. Perhaps he has learned this in the Zoo, for he cannot be induced to perform during visiting hours. He is a reserved person, and exclusive. If you, as a stranger, attempt to scrape his acquaintance, he meets you with an indignant stare--confound your impudence! Nothing in this world can present such a picture of offended, astounded dignity as an owl. I often wonder what he said when Noah ordered him peremptorily into the Ark. As for myself, I should as soon think of ordering one of the beadles at the Bank. [Illustration: NOT YET?] [Illustration: OH, HANG IT!]