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The animal on the cover of Kerberos: The Definitive Guide is a barred owl (Strix varia). It is distinguished by the brown bar markings on its chest and the distinctive dark rings around its eyes. The barred owl generally resides in the woodlands of North America, making its nest in the cavity of trees. The female owl lays between two to four eggs, and the parents often remain with the young for more than four months, making them an exception among other types of owls. Barred owls stay with their chosen mate for life and tend to live about 20 years.

The barred owl eats mainly small mammals, such as mice, shrews, and squirrels. The barred owl will also eat birds, fish, frogs, and insects. These owls can grow to approximately 17 inches, with a wingspan of 44 inches. They are territorial in spring and fall, hooting at other owls to warn them against intruding. The barred owl's only natural predator is the Great Horned owl, but many deaths are attributed to human influence, such as shooting, car accident, or loss of habitat.

Colleen Gorman was the production editor and the copyeditor for Kerberos: The Definitive Guide. Mary Brady, Marlowe Shaeffer, Jane Ellin, and Mary Anne Weeks Mayo provided quality control. John Bickelhaupt wrote the index.

Ellie Volckhausen designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is an engraving from Heck's Pictorial Archive of Nature and Science. Jessamyn Read produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

David Futato designed the interior layout. This book was converted by Julie Hawks to FrameMaker 5.5.6 with a format conversion tool created by Erik Ray, Jason McIntosh, Neil Walls, and Mike Sierra that uses Perl and XML technologies. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia FreeHand 9 and Adobe Photoshop 6. The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher Bing. This colophon was written by Colleen Gorman.

The online edition of this book was created by the Safari production group (John Chodacki, Becki Maisch, and Madeleine Newell) using a set of Frame-to-XML conversion and cleanup tools written and maintained by Erik Ray, Benn Salter, John Chodacki, and Jeff Liggett.