352 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



TRUE TALES OF BIRDS AND BEASTS. 



By DAVID STARR JORDAN. 

 I.— SENOR ALCATRAZ. 



HE was just a bird when he was born, and a very ugly bird at 

 that. For he had big splay feet, with all the toes turned 

 forward and joined together in one broad web, and his wings were 

 thick and clumsy, and underneath his long bill there was a big red 

 sack that he could fill with fishes, and when it was full he could 

 hardly walk or fly, so large the sack was and so great was his appetite. 



But he kept the sack well filled and he emptied it out every day 

 into his stomach, and so he grew very soon to be a large bird, as 

 big as a turkey, though not as fat, and each day uglier than ever. 



But one morning, when he was walking out on the sand flat of 

 the Astillero at Mazatlan, Mexico, where he lived, he saw a big fish 

 which had been left by the falling tide in a little pool of water. It 

 was a blue-colored fish with a big bony head, and no scales, and a 

 sleek, slippery skin. lie did not know that it was a bag re, but he 

 thought that all fishes were good to eat, so he opened his mouth and 

 slipped the fish, tail first, down into his pouch. It went all right 

 for a while, but when the fish woke up and knew he was being swal- 

 lowed, he straightened out both of his arms, and there he was. For 

 the bagre is a kind of catfish, and each arm is a long, stiff, sharp bone, 

 or spine, with a saw edge the whole length of it. And all the bagre 

 has to do is just to put this arm out straight and twist it at the shoul- 

 der and then it is set, and no animal can bend or break it. And it 

 pierced right through the skin of the bird's sack, and the bird could 

 not swallow it, nor make it go up nor down, and the bagre held on 

 tight, for he knew that if he let go once he would be swallowed, and 

 that would be the last of him. 



So the bird tried everything he could think of, and the fish 

 held on, and they kept it up all day. In the afternoon a little boy 

 came out on the sands. His name was Inocente, and he was the 

 son of Ygnacio, the fisherman of Mazatlan. And Inocente took a 

 club of mangrove and ran up to the struggling bird and struck it 

 on the wing with the club. The blow broke the wing, and the bird 

 lay clown to die, for with a broken wing and a fish that would not 

 go up nor down, there was no hope for him. 



"When Inocente saw what kind of a fish it was, he knew just what 

 to do. He reached down into the bird's sack and took hold of the 

 fish's spines. He gave each one a twist so that it rolled over in its 

 socket, the upper part toward the fish's head, and then they were not 



