Down the road from the dump was this cotton gin.  The reason we knew it was a cotton gin was because the guide book said so.  The guide book said so because the cotton gin was a known haunt for a barn owl and widely held to be the place to visit if it was barn owls one wished to see.

We peeked in the doors of the big tin shed and the barn owl shot out into the sunlight, screeching with annoyance, and disappeared into the desert.  I didn't know that cotton gins looked like this on the inside, so I was pretty excited.  That the barn owl was a long-term tenant is testified by the amount of white droppings all over these mysteriously active-looking pipes.

The entire area was deserted.  Tufts of cotton still clung onto the machinery and equipment lying around, fluttering in the wind but never letting go.