Dickey Downy: The Autobiography of a Bird

long-ca

thy bars wi

rest, feeb

music thou

hur

ned by a stone thrown by a small boy who accompanied a hunter. Picking me up he ran tow

olding me up to view, "and I'm going to

no starling neither," answered the man. "Better gi

o tightly that I feared I would be crushed. "I'm going to keep him, I tell ye. He's

we were jogging over the sandy road to their home. As we drove along the man computed, partly to himself, partly aloud, ho

n Cobb's Island last year got ten cents apiece for all the gulls they killed. Forty thousand were killed right there. Oh, it's bou

man ejected a mouthful of dark, offensive juice f

ed to be heaps of orioles an' robins an' larks an' blackbirds an' waxwings through the count

nother friendly pinch that nearly broke my bones. "I'm a going to put it in

t. You'd better kill it. Bet

loose, or do what she pleases wit

and I saw them no more. Arriving at the hunter's home I was put under a bucket that I might not escape, while my captor prepared my prison for me. It was an almost needless precaution for I had

it!" she exclaimed, pushing

t does hurt it?" and he roughly

ny, I'm going to give you a pretty name if you belong to me; let me hold yo

o children, I was badly bruised. Finally I was permitted by my young captor to enter the cage, where I san

ing my blithesome flight through the bright blue sky, but spend the balance of my life in this miserable cell, filled me with despair. Frantic but useless

I wisely made the resolution to endure my imprisonment as cheerfully as possible. I soon began to regain my strength and spirits and, save that I

I would be tossed helplessly from side to side with my feathers ruffled and broken. There was but one thing Joe liked better than this cruel sport, and that was gingerbread; and my tortures were often stopped by Betty's producing a slice of this delicacy which she had saved from her own luncheon for this

ut water or food. Frequently my throat was so parched from thirst that I could not utter a protesting chirp. I knew no other way to attract attention to my want

thus trying to tell them my cup was empty. "It spends all its time poking its head through the wires or thrash

sted Betty, and she came to my c

wled her father, who was in one cor

"What's the use of keeping it? I'd wring its neck a

e girl. "I'll get it somethi

this irregularity and continual neglect, and although I am not a vain bird, my dingy appearance was a source of daily grief and mortification to me. When Betty was not too busy playing she sometimes hung my cage outside

yard, and the pipings of the little ones and the scoldings of the mothers when their children ran too far away fro

ed for them to come to get their share of what was turned up in the soil; meanwhile they kept a sharp lookout with their bright eyes to see that no

s usually tied to a tree by the leg, and although her string was long it seemed always just a little too short to reach the thing she wanted. To make matters worse she had a bad fashion of rushing wildly around the tree and getting her string wound up shorte

when he thought his mother was not looking. As pay for his sport he often got his ears cuffed, for though

ime skeered won't lay?" was the lesson she

ch stepping on each other and on the chickens, in their eagerness to get there first, was almost laughable. In fact, the pink-toed pigeons that walked up and down the ridge of the barn roof, did ma

before it had a chance to fall to the ground. By this good management they usua

verything, and twice as much as y

ised 'em. I paid twenty cents a setting for the eggs out of my own money, and when you raise a thing you generally like it the best. Ducks are a heap smarter'n chickens, anyway," she asserted. "I never can get one of the chickens to feed out of a spoon,

fowls, and they all smacked th

r big yellow bills into it and devoured the contents, letting the chickens below

ly. "Them chickens had just as good a chan

ir necks ain't long enoug

r enough to my cage that I might converse with them, but it always happened that just at the time when one of them would settle close to the house, either Joe's little dog, Colly, would run acr

the edge of my cage he hurriedly told me news of the woods, and how he wished I might get free and come to live there. He told of the lovely dragon flies, with purple, burnished wings that floated in the forest, mingling their drowsy

etty's mother suddenly hurrying out to the pump to fill her bucket, cut short the story, and away my bird friend skimmed

she unhooked my cage to move me into the house that evening

e, see me catch 'em," and in a few minutes he showed her a

to the kitchen, Betty ran along with him and was soon e