Prairie Queen is a large, warm gyrfalcon perched on a partially buried buffalo skull.  While on winter migration, in what most humans would think of as a cold, harsh landscape, she preens her feathers almost as if in the intimacy of a bedroom.   The metaphor of the skull, a Western metaphor for hardship, has no meaning to her.   She is above it.   It is only a perch on the open prairie.   Her royal life is presently affirmed by the absence of death in her thought.