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Birds and All Nature, Vol. VI, No 4, November 1899

<h2>JIM AND I.</h2> BY ELANORA KINSLEY MARBLE. <div> <ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_w.jpg" width-obs="66" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div> WOULDN'T the little readers of Birds and All Nature enjoy a talk with a mother-bird? The father-bird, it seems to me, has done all the talking hitherto. Because he is handsome and can sing is no reason why Jim, my mate, should write up the history of his family. It would have been a sorry attempt had he tried, I promise you, for though he is a Hartz Mountain Canary—pure yellow and white like the lower bird in the picture—he is not at all clever. My mistress says I have more sense in one of my little toes than Jim has in his whole body. "You cute little thing," she exclaims when I kiss her, or take a hemp seed from off her finger, "you are the dearest and wisest little bird in the world." Jim sometimes taunts me because I wear such sober colors—black and brown with green and yellow mixed—like the upper bird in the picture—but I retort that I am a Hartz Mountain bird, also, and have just as good German blood in my veins as he has. Neither of us ever saw the Hartz Mountains, of course, for we were born in Chicago, but our great grandmothers did, I am sure. A good husband? No, I can't say that Jim is. He is too quarrelsome. My mistress says he is a bully, whatever that may mean. He has a fashion of standing by the seed cup and daring me to come and pick up a seed; the same with the drinking-water and the bathing-dish. Then again he is very gracious, and calls me pet names, and sings at the top of his voice every love song he knows. Sometimes I try to imitate him, when he flies into a rage and sharply bids me "shut up." I am too meek to return the compliment, even when I have grown weary of his music, but my mistress shakes her finger at him and calls him a "naughty, naughty bird." She can't tame Jim, all she may do. Few canary birds will resist a hemp seed when offered on a finger. My mistress used to crack them between her teeth and coax and coax him to take one, but he never would. That's the reason she calls him stupid, for we love hemp seed just as you little folks love peanuts, you know. That's the way she tamed me, and that's the way you can tame your canary if you have one. I have had a rather eventful history for a bird. In the first place—but let me begin at the beginning and tell you the circumstance just as it happened. It was about four years ago, so far as I can recollect, that I caught my first glimpse of the world and tasted the sweets of freedom. One balmy morning in June, I escaped from my cage, and the window being open, out I joyously flew into the bright sunshine. I was a little dazzled at first and frightened. How immense the world seemed! How far away the tender blue sky over which the fleecy clouds sailed, that sky which I had thought a mere patch when seen from my cage in the window! How many houses there were, and how inviting the green trees and grass-plots! I fairly danced with joy, and chirped, "I'm free, I'm free," as I flew from place to place, my wings, never tiring, bearing me from tree to housetop and from housetop to tree. Ah, that was a day never to be forgotten. How I escaped the dangers which lurk about the steps of the unwary and innocent has always been a marvel to me. The hostile sparrows, for instance, the green-eyed, sharp-clawed cat, the sling-shot of the cruel boy, the—but why linger over horrors which might, but did not happen? In this way the morning passed joyfully, the pangs of hunger, as noon approached, however, advising me sharply it was near dinner time. From housetop to housetop I flew, from tree to tree, but nowhere could I find a little china cup filled with rape, hemp, and [Pg 150] canary seed, or a tiny glass vessel filled with water that I might slake my thirst. What should I do? A bird brought up as I had been, I reflected, could never descend to work for a living, as the sparrows did, and other wild birds which I had met among the trees. Some of them ate insects—fact, I assure you—and one red-headed bird, wearing a coat of many gay colors, simply tapped and tapped on a tree with his hard bill whenever he wanted his dinner. "Come in," said the bug, innocently, who was making his home between the bark and the tree, "come in." Nobody appearing, the bug ventured out to see who his caller might be. "Good morning," grinned the woodpecker, and then politely gobbled the poor bug up. But I was not brought up that way. I could not eat bugs, neither could I rummage in the garbage boxes as the sparrows did. Oh, how unwise of me, and how ungrateful to run away from a home where my every need was faithfully served by a kind mistress. Like the prodigal I would return. Surely I would know the house, the very window from which I had fled. Yes, I would start at once, and off I flew in the direction which I thought I had come. But, alas! how alike all the houses in that neighborhood seemed. Vainly did I fly down on many a window-sill and peer in. No mistress' face greeted me, no empty cage swung idly between the curtains. At length, faint from hunger and fatigue, I flew down and perched upon the railing of a porch where two ladies were sitting. "You dear little thing," said one of the ladies—I want to say here that I am much smaller than the dark Hartz Mountain bird who sat for her picture—"I never saw a sparrow so tiny, or marked like you before." "It's a canary, not a sparrow," said the other lady, "doubtless, somebody's lost pet," and she held out her hand, and chirped and talked to me very much like my lost mistress had done. "Poor little wanderer," she at length said, as I looked at her, but made no effort to fly away, "I have an idea you came to us for food," and then she went into the house and shortly returned with a cage in the bottom of which she scattered seed, placing it upon the ground very close to me. "Rape, hemp and canary," I chirped, "the seed I am used to," and down I at once flew, hopped into the cage, and, the next moment, was made prisoner. Sorry? Well, really I don't know. My period of freedom had been so brief, and attended with such anxiety and fear, that I hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. The next day, however, I knew that my lines had indeed fallen in pleasant places. My first mistress had been kind, but oh, how much more tender and thoughtful the new one proved to be! "I was a helpless little creature," she said, "and upon her depended my entire comfort and happiness." Never for one day did she neglect me. Though my regular bill-of-fare was bird-seed, yet she varied it as she did her own. Cracker, lettuce, apples, grapes, cherries, sugar, and always in the summer, pepper-grass. If you little folks have a canary never fail, I beseech you, to give them of the latter all they want to eat. It costs nothing and may be gathered in any vacant lot fresh every day. What pleasure so kind a mistress could find in keeping me in a little gilt cage, I could not see, for there were screens in the window, and even if there had not been I don't believe I should have cared to fly away. Something in my appearance one day suggested the thought to her, I am sure, for looking at me earnestly, she said: "You are not happy, my birdie, I fear. Neither would I be, cooped up in a cage like that," and so she opened wide the door and out I flew, never to be a prisoner again—till, well, I will not speak of that just here, but keep it for the close. What famous times we did have after that, to be sure. Whenever I felt lonesome down I'd fly upon the desk where my mistress sat writing. She would pretend not to see me till I had hopped upon the very sheet over which her pen was gliding. "Why birdie!" she would then cry, [Pg 151] as though very much astonished, and off I'd fly, as she made a dash for me, to the window where I would hide behind the ruffle of the sash curtain. "Cheep, cheep," I'd cry, just as you little folks cry "whoop," when all is ready, "cheep, cheep." "Where can my birdie be?" she would say after awhile, dropping her pen. "Where can she be?" and then she would look here and there, till presently approaching my hiding-place, out I'd fly, with a gurgle, into an adjoining room, where I'd again crouch behind the curtain. Between you and me I believe she knew all the time where I was hiding and only pretended to search for me here and there. Anyway it was capital fun, and I never tired of it, though mistress did. "I can't play with you any more," she would say, "you quite tire me out," and then she would go to writing again and so our game of "hide and seek" would end for that day. "Everything needs companionship," she said one morning to my master, "birds, children and men," and so that day he brought home a large wooden cage in which was as handsome a canary bird as you would want to see. That was Jim, and oh, how happy I was, when, a few days after, he asked me to be his mate. I said "yes," almost before he had got the song out of his mouth—I didn't know what a tyrant and bully he was till afterward, you know—and so we went pretty soon to housekeeping in the wooden cage. My mistress understood what I wanted when she saw me picking up threads and pulling her chenille table cover to pieces, and so in one corner of the cage she put a nest made of wire and covered with a bit of muslin. Near by were little heaps of cotton-batting, wrapping-cord, and hair. Dear, dear, how busy I was for days! Jim, as I have said before, did nothing much but sing—and criticise. More than once I dragged all the furniture out of our wire home, because he thought I should have put the hair in first, and the cotton and strings in afterward. For a newly wedded couple, on their honeymoon so to speak, we did a vast amount of quarreling. The nest, however, was at last made cozy enough to suit us, and so one day I climbed in it and sat for quite a while. Then I called to Jim and I must say he seemed to be just as proud as I was of the little blue speckled egg which lay there so snug in the cotton. The next day but one I laid another, and then one every day till I had laid five. My, how I felt when I gathered them up close under me and sat down to brood. If all went well, after thirteen or fourteen days, we would have five dear birdlings. For fear the eggs might get chilled I left them only a few minutes at a time, hurriedly eating a few seeds, then back on the nest again. Jim could have helped me very much by brooding the eggs while I took exercise and my meals, but he was too selfish for that. All he did was to fly about and sing, bidding me to keep my spirits up. If it hadn't been for my mistress I should have fared badly, you may believe. She fed me crackers soaked in milk, cracked hemp seeds and placed them around the edge of the nest, besides other delicacies in the vegetable line too numerous to mention. When the birdlings were born Jim appeared to be very proud indeed. He couldn't sing long or loud enough, leaving me to feed the five gaping, pleading red mouths every day. Ah, no one knows better than a mother how much trouble and worry there is in bringing up a family. I'm sure I have had experience enough, for since that time I have had so many birdlings I can't count them. One season I had eighteen, three nests, and six in the nest each time. They were considered such fine birds that my mistress had no difficulty in selling them as soon as they learned to sing. Now I am coming to a period the thought of which fills my heart with sorrow. For some reason that I am not able to tell you, my mistress concluded to part with me and Jim. She shed tears over it, I know, but nevertheless we felt ourselves being borne away one night, and in the morning, lo! we found ourselves in a large, bare room, on the floor of which was painted an immense ring or circle. I was sitting on six blue, speckled eggs at the [Pg 152] time, and didn't mind it so much, but Jim was very cross and restless, for the cage door was fastened and he bitterly resented imprisonment. Alas! from that time forth we never were to know freedom again; from that time forth we had to accustom ourselves to many, many changes. About nine o'clock the door of the room opened and in came a little girl, followed by a little boy. Then more little girls and boys, till I counted, as well as I could, seventeen. All one family? Oh, no, I'm not talking about bird families now. As many as could crowded about the cage and stared at me with wide-open eyes. The cage was on a low table so they could peep into the nest. Oh, how frightened I was. One little chap thrust his finger through the bars, and down I flew, leaving my precious eggs exposed. That was what they wanted, and oh how they did exclaim! I went back pretty soon, however, for I began to understand that they did not mean to harm me or the eggs either. However, it was many days ere I got over the feeling of fright when stared at by so many eyes, but by the time the birdlings were hatched out I had grown quite used to it. Indeed I felt somewhat proud of the interest those wee tots took in my babies, my manner of feeding them never failing to call forth cries of wonder and praise. "She just chews up the seeds and swallows 'em," said a little chap one day, "then when the baby birds cry for something to eat she brings it up and stuffs it down their long throats with her bill. My! it's ever so much better than a spoon." The teacher laughed and patted the little fellow on the head. "That is your first lesson in nature-study, Victor," said she, and then a lady at the piano struck up a march and off they all trooped two by two. "Where do you suppose we are?" crossly said Jim, hopping excitedly from one perch to another, "it looks like a lunatic asylum to me." Jim, as I have stated before, is a very stupid bird. The words "lesson" and "nature-study" held no meaning for him. "It seems to me," I said, watching the little tots marching with an observing eye, "that we are in a kindergarten." "A kindergarten," echoed Jim, "what's that?" "Why," I explained, "a school where young children are taught to love everything and everybody. Surely we have nothing to fear." And so it turned out to be, a kindergarten, in which, I am proud to say, for purposes of nature-study, I have raised many and many a brood. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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