THIS JUST IN - the attempted rescue of a great horned owlet, as related by my faithful correspondent, retired state biologist W.R. "Nick" Carter 3rd.

On a walk through the Eastern Shore woods that they had let grow up from a cornfield they bought 25 years ago, Carter and his wife heard the dogs barking up ahead.

On the ground, infant ear tufts erect, hissing and clacking his beak like a string of ladyfinger firecrackers, was a young owl.

Apparently flightless and standing only about as high as a football on a tee, he was dauntlessly holding the hounds at bay.

A high wind had probably blown it from the nest. With an eye on its serious talons, and having read that great horned owls are incorrigibly savage from birth, Carter got a pair of heavy welder's gloves, and cautiously picked the young owl up.

Surprise - no aggression at all. It perched calmly on his wrist, peering from big, goggly, lemon-yellow eyes.

After searching vainly for a nest, or adult owls, Carter made a perch in one of his sheds, and set off in search of suitable owl food.

Feeding a baby great horned proved no problem. Great blue herons, nutria, cats, skunks, snakes, hawks, small dogs, other owls - these fierce, top-of-the-line predators eat it all. A guy who used to band owls told Carter that he had once found the hindquarters of a beagle in a great horned's nest.

Carter bought a couple of live chickens, wrung their necks and, making owl-like sounds, offered up the fowl in large chunks. The owlet ate like a little pig - breasts, wings, guts, skin, feathers. Throwing back its head, it gulped everything down with a backward toss of its head.

The next morning, the owl had escaped the outdoor pen Carter moved it to, apparently by scaling, with beak and talons, a tree trunk that arched outside the fence. No sign of the little one's parents.

After inhaling more chicken, it drowsed in the sun. Later on, Carter fed it half of a large croaker. Still later, it ate more chicken, a mouse and a second helping of croaker.

The next morning, Sunday, no owl.

The crows will find it, Carter figured. Crows hate owls, which eat them, and whenever they spot one in daylight, they gather from all over to dive-bomb and harass it. The owl seldom suffers worse than the indignity of it all - but the occasional crow that darts too close is gone in the snap of a beak.

Sure enough, the crow horde had zeroed in on the young owl, which had climbed a tall, rotten tree. Using a ladder, Carter hung a feeding tray near as he could, all the while making owlish sounds. By this point, Mrs. Carter was beginning to wonder about her husband.

Monday morning. Owl gone again.

The crows found it in another tree, farther away this time, and maybe 40 feet up. Carter, figuring it's got to be hungry, strapped on lineman's spurs and a climbing belt jerry-rigged from an old auto seatbelt. He took a bucksaw, too, figuring to saw partly through the limb where the owl was perched, until it sagged down to where he could feed it again.

After a mishap with the belt slipping that took much of the skin off both forearms, Carter, panting and cursing, reached the base of the owl's limb and began to saw, ever so gently as not to scare it into jumping.

Surprise - the owl could fly now. It winged away into a bigger, higher tree a hundred yards away. Carter, trembling, bleeding, drenched with sweat, is euphoric, because the little owl's survival chances, flighted, are much improved.

Tuesday morning. Owl nowhere to be found. It was Friday before Carter heard the harassing crows again. This time their target was a huge, adult great horned, which flew off as he approached. Another adult flew as Carter pushed into the woods.

And then, sitting way up in a big pine, looking down at him, was what he is almost certain was the owlet, looking a little taller and bigger now. Great horned owls need a large territory, and there's little likelihood another family of them would this close.

He still wonders, weeks later, whether he did the right thing, picking up the grounded owlet. A lot of bird advice says don't touch fallen nestlings, to let the parents do what they can. Maybe he saved it from ground predators; maybe he saved it from starvation.

He'll never know, but retirement in the countryside, for those who choose to live it engaged with nature, is never boring.