122 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 



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 off 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 have 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 



