94, KNOWING BIRDS THROUGH STORIES 



ried home a nice bunch of game, but more often I came 

 home without having fired a shot. I had learned to be 

 expert in shooting, but never could make up my mind to 

 kill anything if I allowed myself to stop and watch it for 

 a time, because it always seemed to be having such a fine 

 time living that it would be entirely too bad to end so 

 happy an existence. 



I had set my gun down against a tree and was watching 

 an old mother crawfish which I had forced to release the 

 youngsters she was carrying under her tail, gather them 

 up again, one by one, when I heard a "quack, quack, 

 quack/' as plain as if it had been made by a duck. I had 

 never killed any ducks and it seemed a very desirable thing 

 to slip up on the drove which I felt sure was just around 

 the bend of the creek and perchance shoot one. 



Taking my rifle I slipped along the path that led just 

 above the old fern bank, and when I came near crawled 

 as noiselessly as possible to the creek bank beyond the 

 bend. There was plenty of hazelbrush on this bank and as 

 people were not accustomed to hunt here I found no diffi- 

 culty in reaching the bank of the creek only a few yards 

 from where I expected to find my ducks without being 

 discovered. Cautiously peering up and down the creek I 

 saw nothing. Then it occurred to me to look in the pool 

 and surely enough, no more than fifty or sixty feet away 

 were a pair of fish ducks or, as they should be called, coots. 

 They were swimming about without the least suspicion 

 of fear, having just the best time possible catching tad- 

 poles. No fish had been left in this pool the last time 

 the creek had flooded, and an old warted toad had selected 

 this place to lay her eggs and consequently there were 

 young toad tadpoles here by the hundreds if not thou- 



