When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, it may not be amore at all, but a ghostly white barn owl about to kill and eat you.

If you’re a vole, that is.

Voles are a favorite meal for barn owls, which come in two shades, reddish brown and white. When the moon is new, both have equal success hunting for their young, snagging about five voles in a night. But when the moon is full and bright, the reddish owls do poorly, dropping to three a night.

Barn owls with white faces and breasts do as well as ever, however, even though they should be more easily spotted than their reddish relatives when the lunar light reflects off their feathers.

They may well be more easily seen , but it doesn’t matter because of the behavior of their prey. Voles have two responses to owl sightings. They freeze, and hope the owl doesn’t see them. Or they run. But when they see a white owl in bright moonlight, the terrified rodents act like deer caught in headlights and freeze up to five seconds longer than they do for a reddish brown barn owl.