Page:Bird-lore Vol 06.djvu/199

 160 Bird - Lore

extremely wild nature of the common Crow, this is very remarkable. I'

remember once sitting at an open window, and hearing the peculiar cry King Cole always gave when frightened. He presently swooped in at the window with a wild Crow in full chase—who actually only'turned back when I sprang up and waved my hands—positively ‘shooing‘ him away. I was as badly frightened as King Cole, who meanwhile lost no time in scrambling beneath the sofa—for the stranger was a big, ﬁerce fellow with glittering black eyes, and was snapping his great beak furiously.

When he finally beat a retreat, it was only to a tree not more than twenty feet from the house, where he stayed for some time, watching the window and clamoring angrily.

King Cole was very fond of going with us into the woods or ﬁelds to gather berries, and the way he would keep his weather eye open for his enemies was a caution. If he sighted one, in the distance, or heard a ‘caw‘ overhead, he would come scrambling to us and creep under our pinafores, with little crooning utterances. From this safe retreat, he would poke his head cautiously out to rake the sky, ﬁrst with one eye and then with the other, in search of his foes.

I remember a very funny thing that happened one day. We were gathering strawberries, and there was an old woman some distance from us picking away industriously — her wide-brimmed straw hat covering her shoul- ders. A bird’s—eye view must have shown little else than hat, I fancy. I don’t know What King Cole thought it was, but he dropped straight upon it with a couple of ear-piercing ‘caws,’ and over the old body went with a smothered howl of terror. Afraid to move, she lay stiﬂly with her feet half way up the side of a little knoll, her hands before her eyes fearing to behold the monster from the sky. We ran to help her up, explaining, and, when we got her on her feet, found she had fallen on her basket of berries, and her light—colored calico dress was stained with their juice, from her head to her heels, a sight to behold l We looked about for the author of the mischief, and there he wasl Snuggled beneath the hat as quiet as a mouse. hoping, no doubt, to hide until the trouble blew over. We got the worst of it in the end, however, and were obliged to beat a hasty retreat, with King Cole wrapped up in Meg's apron to save him from the wrath of the assaulted one, who gave us avery plain piece of her mind about keeping "sich creeters araound "!

Before long, we began to hear a great many complaints of our pet. One neighbor declared he had come in her window one morning and flown off with her tooth-brush; another, that she had found him in her kitchen with his legs embedded in a batch of bread-dough, which she had put to rise by the fire. Had she not been a tender-hearted soul, he would have met his death then and there However, it was not long after this that he disappeared, and, though we looked and inquired everywhere, it