Walking up the river bank a little way to the edge of the towering timber. 

 we found a man and two boys fishing. They had had no luck. It was too early, 

 they said, and there was still too much water in the ri\'er. It was while talking 

 to them that we saw a moving streak in the water. The ripple with its shining 

 trail came nearer and nearer, and in a moment we saw that it was a snake with 

 uplifted head, that was swimming for the bank at our feet. I have never liked 

 snakes well enough to care to scrape acquaintance with them. I have never been 

 able to take well to heart Dr. Abbott's teaching of the beauty and friendliness 

 of the serpent tribe. The snake that was swimming the Kankakee that spring 

 morning was surely four feet long, and it had a certain beauty of coloring that 

 pleased the eye even while the mind loathed. The man of the fishing party said 

 the snake visitor was a blue-racer and that it was "as pizen as a rattler." We 

 doubted the truth of the latter assertion, but in the face of it we could not but 

 admire the cool indifference of one of the small boy fishers, who sat dabbling his 

 bare feet and legs in the water within a few inches of the place where the blue- 

 racer was trying to land. The man made a jab at the snake with his fishing-pole 

 and then struck at it with a club, but the reptile drew its slimy length safely out 

 of sight among the spreading roots of a waterside tree. 



Snakes are like misfortunes, they never come singly. We had left the little 

 fishing party only a few yards behind when we came within an ace of stepping 

 on a chocolate-colored snake about three feet in length. It was a hideous-looking 

 reptile. It was blunter and fatter at the head and about the body than any snake 

 I had ever encountered in my rambles. From the plump part it tapered olT 

 rapidly to a sharp-pointed tail. When Nature painted this creature she added 

 a little dark ginger-root to the colors with which she had striped the hideous 

 gila monster, and then had laid the pigment on thick. Neither of us waterside 

 travelers that morning could give the snake a name, and though I have searched 

 diligently since, I ha\e been unable to find in the books anything that looked 

 like it. 



It is not a very far cry from the snake to one species of bird. The cow-bird 

 is regarded by its feathered fellows in much the same light as human beings 

 regard serpents. We hardly had banished the chocolate-colored crawler from our 

 minds when we came across a cow-bird sneaking — there is no other word for 

 it — its way down through the branches of a willow. It took only a moment to 

 show the bird's object. A newly completed yellow warbler's nest, a perfect gem 

 of bird architecture, was fastened in the crotch of some slender twigs of the 

 willow, not more than four feet from the ground. The cow-bird was about to 

 deposit an egg in the little down structure and to trust to the goodness of heart 

 of the warbler to act as foster-mother. I threw a club at the cow-bird and 

 frightened it away. About ten minutes afterwards I went to the willow tree once 

 more, and there was the parasite again acting in the same sneaking way that it 

 had at first. I frightened it away once more, but rebuffs of that kind count 

 nothing with this bird. I haven't the faintest doubt that a visit to the vicinity 



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