Owl

Perched in darkness with golden-green eyes glowing and head shifting silently, three-hundred-sixty degrees around, because her neck can do mysterious things and because unlike most, she can see, the owl waits.  

In a way, you could say she's preying, over a moonlit forest floor; praying for movement or anything to evaluate and perhaps lash out upon, rip apart and mangle to feed her growing appetite, but in a way, you could say that she's not even interested in satiation, rather the hunt; the idea of the hunt.   

Critters will scurry and their easiness isn't appealing, because she knows that they can't see her and in one swoop it could all be had and the hunt would be finished, and what a messy finish, she thinks, her feathers neatly arranged below those pointy tufts.  

So, she sits silently and calmly, on top of a snaky cage of branches, bursting out in right angles. And it sways at a calculable crunch from the steady pace of the elk, who is the vessel, unaware of her furtive, light presence, just searching for a clear stream and some brush to nestle in.