Dickey Downy: The Autobiography of a Bird

ds, water fowl, and man

rglades to the Arctic C

women's hats. The ex

alling.-G.

, the accounts they gave of the day's slaughter made me very hom

n would ask her husband if it had been "a good

erries in the high weeds along the creek, and were havin' a mighty good time stuffing themselves with seeds. Joe fired the old gun to start 'em and, great Jer

water bird down in the swamp,

what was it, po

ird that hadn't the grit to get away from me," a

ent when we was right up close to 'em was funny, I tell ye," and Joe lea

tame as kittens then. You can go right up to 'em and they won't leave the nest. Them

ouse toward 'em, and there they stayed. The male bird he fluttered and' squawked, and the female she stuck to the nest till pop he got right up and he didn't even have to shoot her. He just club

said Betty indignantly. "And, anyway, I wouldn't a-killed

ig things!" was Jo

cruel," persisted Betty; "I don't

trimmen' if we didn't kill 'em, hey?" and Joe

of the bees as they flew homeward, the wind-harp played in the yellow pines its softest, sweetest music, and I scented the odor of honeysuckles and roses far a

to be given as a present to a young relative of Betty's, who lived to the northward in a distant State. My present existence had grown almost intoler

more. I whetted my bill till it glistened, and my

" Betty's mother had, said when they talked of my depart

her. "Polly was always fond of pets, and she'll be powerful

ke spending the money, neither," mused the mother. "Polly might like a bre

arful was I that I might have to remain at th

my string of beads. As for giving her a bresspin for a keepsake, she can get a heap nicer one out of their own store than any we could send her, and I'm ce

he cost of the cage," said her mother, and so t

ure in which I had been shut up so long. Its rim was painted a cheerful green, and the wires were burnished like gold. Ornamental sconces held the gl

. She further assured me that I would find the motion of the cars delightful, and that all I would have to do was to sit on my perch and munch my seed and have a good time. How jolly it would be to go whizzing past fences and over bridges and through tunnels and towns and never know it, she said. She als

my cage, and I started on my journey. Of my trip, of course, I knew nothing. Part of the way we rode in a wagon through the country to the stat

ind the cage once more swinging from his hand and to hear the click of his boot he