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.