In Soviet-American Digest, the eagle rotates you!

There's something sobering and slightly intimidating at walking down a Jeep trail at dusk and having a snowy owl appear from nowhere to pounce on the vole crouched in the grass two feet in front of you.

The only thing I saw was "grass ... grass ... grass ... owl!" and the only thing I heard was the soft thud of talons hitting the vole.

Was the cameraman from TMZ?

I was attacked by a crow a couple of weeks ago. I discovered that in contrast to our excellent automatic reflexes when something attacks our legs or body, we humans have poor reflexes when something comes at our head, especially when we're holding a dog's leash in one hand and have only one hand to defend our head.

Even though a crow is much smaller than an owl, its wings fully enveloped my head and beating it off was much more difficult than I expected.

A recent archaeological find was that a 2 or 3 year old child of 10,000 years ago died because he had been carried off by a bird who, archaeologists concluded, had dashed his head against a rock.

Magnificent. Look at those feathers! My husband encountered a great horned owl one evening, as he was going through the human-sized door into the barn, and the owl decided come out the door at the same time. Apparently being wing-beat by an owl is quite a treat, and memorable. Very very memorable. After that, Husband would open the door and stand way back to let the owl go first---which it did.

its wings fully enveloped my head and beating it off was much more difficult than I expected

I'm sorry, but the imagery of getting that intimate with a crow is hurting my head :-)

...and then the tape ran out, right?

Seriously, watching those talons unfurl is quite unnerving.

A few weeks ago I flushed an owl out of fallen pine tree which was extended over my driveway. It's wing span was about 3 feet while the body looked to be 12-14 inches. I hear the owls regularly but this was the first one I have seen.