In the 1940s in the Florida Everglades, a man has been trying to shoot an owl that has been taking his chickens for a while now along with his female mate, but the owl always gets away. Now the man has gone into the woods to pursue the owl so that the owl cannot evade him. He sees the owl and shoots it, and by some miracle, hits the bird. When he approaches the bird, the man realizes he has not killed the bird but injured one of his wings. The man decides that, as a type of revenge for his chickens, he will keep the owl in a cage and let it suffer before he kills it. The man puts the bird in the cage and is enraged by its hateful yellow eyes and mocking winking. When a customer comes by and offers to buy the beautiful owl, the man refuses to sell. He decides that the best way to make the bird suffer, which has regained use of its injured wing, is to kill its mate. The female owl keeps calling to the male, and when it comes so close to approach its mate, the man shoots the female. But the male, in its cage, remains unfazed and looks at the man with its mocking winking eyes. The man is fed up and decides to shoot the owl right then in its cage. The shot ricochets, however, and hits the man himself. The bullet creates a hole in the cage large enough for the bird to escape, and the owl, with no hate in its eyes but merely existing as an owl, takes a look at the man bleeding out and flies away.