In May of 2013 a great horned owl fell into our backyard while I unloaded grocery bags from my car. I froze and kept a distance. We’d been watching the family; this looked like the female. She and her mate had made a nest in the live oak behind our house, or, rather, they’d been squatting in a nest built by black crows who daily mobbed them with swoops and scolds. Babies—we counted two—had hatched. At night, one parent guarded the clutch while the other hunted in the park across the street. A red clay finial on the roof of our house served as a lookout perch, or the crooked telephone pole. The owl sighted prey, its thick head on a swivel. My husband…