Emerald Story Book

<h3><SPAN name="THE_HOUSE_WREN">THE HOUSE WREN</SPAN></h3> <p class="center"><span class="smcap">Neltje Blanchan</span></p> <p>When you are sound asleep some April morning, a tiny brown bird, just returned from a long visit south, will probably alight on the perch in front of one of your boxes, peep in the doorhole, enter—although his pert little cocked-up tail has to be lowered to let him through—look about with approval, go out, spring to the roof and pour out of his wee throat a gushing torrent of music. The song seems to bubble up faster than he can sing. After the wren’s happy discovery of a place to live, his song will go off in a series of musical explosions all day long, now from the roof, now from the clothes posts, the fence, the barn, or the woodpile. There never was a more tireless, spirited, brilliant singer. From the intensity of his feelings, he sometimes droops that expressive little tail of his, which is usually so erect and saucy.</p> <p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN id="Page_172"></SPAN>[172]</span></p> <p>With characteristic energy, he frequently begins to carry twigs into the house before he finds a mate. The day little Jenny Wren appears on the scene, how he does sing! Dashing off for more twigs, but stopping to sing to her every other minute, he helps furnish the cottage quickly, but, of course, he overdoes—he carries in more twigs and hay and feathers than the little house can hold, then pulls half of them out again. Jenny gathers, too, for she is a bustling housewife and arranges matters with neatness and despatch. Neither vermin nor dust will she tolerate within her well-kept home. Everything she does to suit herself pleases her ardent little lover. He applauds her with song; he flies about after her with a nervous desire to protect; he seems beside himself with happiness. Let any one pass too near his best beloved, and he begins to chatter excitedly: “<i>Chit-chit-chit-chit</i>,” as much as to say, “Oh, do go away; go quickly! Can’t you see how nervous and fidgety you make me?”</p> <p>If you fancy that Jenny Wren, who is patiently sitting on the little pinkish, chocolate<span class="pagenum"><SPAN id="Page_173"></SPAN>[173]</span> spotted eggs in the centre of her feather bed, is a demure, angelic creature, you have never seen her attack the sparrow, nearly twice her size, that dares put his impudent head inside her door. Oh! how she flies at him! How she chatters and scolds! What a plucky little shrew she is, after all! Her piercing, chattering, scolding notes are fairly hissed into his ears until he is thankful enough to escape.</p> <div class="poetry-container" id="THE_LITTLE_BROWN_WREN"> <div class="poetry"> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse indent0">There’s a little brown wren that has built in our tree,<SPAN id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</SPAN></div> <div class="verse indent0">And she’s scarcely as big as a big bumble-bee;</div> <div class="verse indent0">She has hollowed a house in the heart of a limb,</div> <div class="verse indent0">And made the walls tidy and made the doors trim</div> <div class="verse indent0">With the down of the crow’s foot, and tow, and with straw</div> <div class="verse indent0">The cosiest dwelling that you ever saw.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse indent0">The little brown wren has the brightest of eyes</div> <div class="verse indent0">And a foot of very diminutive size.</div> <div class="verse indent0">Her tail is as big as the sail of a ship.</div> <div class="verse indent0">She’s demure, though she walks with a hop and a skip;</div> <div class="verse indent0">And her voice—but a flute were more fit than a pen</div> <div class="verse indent0">To tell of the voice of the little brown wren.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse indent0">One morning Sir Sparrow came sauntering by</div> <div class="verse indent0">And cast on the wren’s house an envious eye;</div> <div class="verse indent0">With a strut of bravado and toss of his head,</div> <p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN id="Page_174"></SPAN>[174]</span></p> <div class="verse indent0">“I’ll put in my claim here,” the bold fellow said;</div> <div class="verse indent0">So straightway he mounted on impudent wing,</div> <div class="verse indent0">And entered the door without pausing to ring.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse indent0">An instant—, and swiftly that feathery knight</div> <div class="verse indent0">All towsled and tumbled, in terror took flight,</div> <div class="verse indent0">While there by the door, in her favourite perch,</div> <div class="verse indent0">As neat as a lady just starting for church,</div> <div class="verse indent0">With this song on her lips, “He will not call again</div> <div class="verse indent0">Unless he is asked,” sat the little brown wren.</div> </div> </div></div> <p>If the bluebirds had her courage and hot, quick temper, they would never let the sparrows drive them away from their boxes. Unfortunately a hole large enough to admit a bluebird will easily admit those grasping monopolists; but Jenny Wren is safe, if she did but know it, in her house with its tiny front door. It is amusing to see a sparrow try to work his shoulders through the small hole of an empty wren house, pushing and kicking madly, but all in vain.</p> <p>What rent do the wrens pay for their little houses? No man is clever enough to estimate the vast numbers of insects on your place that they destroy. They eat nothing else, which is the chief reason why they are so lively and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN id="Page_175"></SPAN>[175]</span> excitable. Unable to soar after flying insects because of their short, round wings, they keep, as a rule, rather close to the ground which their finely barred brown feathers so closely match. Whether hunting for grubs in the wood-pile, scrambling over the brush heap after spiders, searching among the trees to provide a dinner for their large families, or creeping, like little feathered mice, in queer nooks and crannies among the outbuildings on the farm, they are always busy in your interest which is also theirs. It certainly pays, in every sense, to encourage the wrens.</p> <hr class="chap" /> <!--chapter--> <p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN id="Page_176"></SPAN>[176]</span></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />