IT'S A SUNNY but cold day as I forge up the hill north of Steinberg Skating Rink in Forest Park. Only the bravest purple crocuses have appeared in the brown winter grass. Together with a group of researchers, I'm hunting for Forest Park's apex predator. Between the park's canal waters and the MetroLink, a clutch of pines are known to be the roosting trees of Astrid, the great horned owl.
“We have definitely found a couple of rabbit vertebrae here,” says Jeff Meshach of the World Bird Sanctuary. He plucks a bone from a bed of brown pine needles. It's a little larger and sharper than a fingernail. “So if she caught a rabbit,” Meshach says, looking up into the
