296 KNOWING BIRDS THROUGH STORIES 



the grass and I would follow it a few steps and then stop 

 to listen. The sound always seemed only a few feet away, 

 but strange to say every time I thought I was getting near, 

 it would come from some place a little way beyond. After 

 the bird had led me about from place to place for five or ten 

 minutes, the last ^^peep" was pretty sure to come from a 

 tree straight overhead and would be followed by the cackle 

 of a guinea or the bark of a dog, and I would remark to 

 myself, "stung again!" Nevertheless the next night my 

 anxiety usually got the better of my judgment, and I would 

 feel sure that that time a gosling had actually gotten 

 out. 



A little later in the season there was a brood of baby 

 bronze turkeys about the house for a few days, and we 

 had our performance over again practically every night, 

 except that Sir Mocking Bird chose to imitate a baby 

 turkey rather than a gosling that had now grown too large 

 to need care. 



A little later I bought an Angora cat which raised me 

 a few broods of kittens. Now my mocker was in the height 

 of his glory, seeming to realize that the safety of a 

 kitten meant a great deal more than that of a gosling or a 

 turkey, and I think he must have had the time of his life 

 worrying me night after night every" time there was a litter 

 of kittens on the back porch. You may say that I should 

 have learned that the mocking bird was deceiving me. I 

 felt so too, sometimes, but just so surely as I came to this 

 conclusion I would find that some imp had put it into 

 the head of some of my pets actually to get out and lose 

 themselves and when I did not go to the rescue some real 

 disaster was quite sure to happen. 



A little later, when the neighbor's guineas became noisy. 



