FEBRUARY, “THE LONG-SHORT MONTH” 829 
“Yes, ma’am, they acted real mean. They went right 
down in the cedar trees beyond the garden to sleep, and 
every morning before father or my brothers were up they 
went into the strawberry bed, and even before any were 
ripe, they bit the red side of the green ones and 
spoiled them. Father was pretty mad, because our 
land has run out for onions and we’ve got to raise berries 
for a few years —all kinds, raspberries, currants, black- 
berries — to even up. 
“Father dassent shoot the Robins, ’cause of the law, 
and besides, we like ’em real well after berry time, so 
brother John he made a plan, and it worked splendid. 
He fixed up a nice little house like a chicken-coop and 
put it on a stump in the middle of the bed, and then 
he put our cat in the house. She was comfortable and 
had good eating and plenty of air, but of course she 
couldn’t get out, so she just sat there and growled and 
switched her tail at the birds, and they stayed away.” 
Gray Lady laughed heartily at this scheme, which cer- 
tainly was very ingenious. 
“That was truly a new sort of scarecrow, and much 
better than firing off blank cartridges in the nesting 
season, when other birds might be frightened. How- 
ever, it proves one thing without a doubt, that cats are 
the worst enemies that wild birds have to fear, and 
shows us how careful we should be about turning 
them out at large, outside of the cities where there are 
no birds, or keeping more than one under any circum- 
stances. 
“What I meant to ask was, do you know what the 
young Robins do after they leave the nest and the 
