Law Society media supremo Melissa Davis got herself a bargain when she bought a second-hand stuffed owl over the internet for a very reasonable £68.

New ones – equally dead, but recently eviscerated – can retail for as much as £600, she told Obiter last week. Her dad, who has apparently long coveted such an item, was delighted with the gift on Christmas day.

What the resourceful Chancery Lane spinner did not appreciate was that the sale of strigiformes raises an interesting point of law. Back in 2005, an unfortunate Merseyside man was prosecuted for selling a stuffed snowy owl on the internet because he did not have the certificate required to sell an endangered species. His solicitor, Michael Brahams, could not resist quoting John Cleese: ‘Endangered? It's gone to join the choir invisible; it's bleedin’ deceased!’ – or words to that effect. This seemed to do the trick; the man was conditionally discharged. Davis wonders whether this explains why her owl was handed over in the dead of night at a motorway service station – with the vendor later emigrating to Canada. ‘My dad loves his present, so frankly I don’t give a hoot,’ says she.