98 STORIES OF BIRD LIFE 



receive from the hands of the very beings whom they so 

 constantly aid by destroying countless millions of harm- 

 ful insects. Some of the fruit growers shoot the birds be- 

 cause they choose to sample now and then the fruit which 

 they have helped to raise. 



Once I knew a man, who, along with his other occupa- 

 tions, was a grape grower in a small way. He could not 

 ' ' abide ' ' a mocking bird, he declared, ' ' they ate his grapes 

 so much." He shouted, and waved blankets, and hung 

 up bright pieces of tin to frighten them away, but the birds 

 continued to fill their stomachs with fruit and the farmer 

 with wrath. 



' 'One of those pesky little rascals will come," he said, 

 ' ' and go to work on the finest bunch of grapes he can find. 

 He will bite a hole in one, and stick his bill in another, and 

 keep on that way until he has ruined the whole bunch. 

 Then he will jump up on top of the vine somewhere and 

 shout and sing as though he had done something mighty 

 smart and wanted everybody to know it. And the wood- 

 peckers are about as bad, ' ' he added. 



So at length the exasperated husbandman put a gun 

 into the hands of his son and offered him a reward of two 

 cents a head for all these birds he would kill within a 

 radius of a mile. And the boy hunted and killed to his 

 heart's content with all the glee of a young savage. Within 



