THE CRAZY FLICKER 17 



I wish I could have seen the expression on his 

 face and read his thoughts when he got through 

 and found himself inside an empty barn. He 

 must have been the most amazed and mystified 

 bird in the region, if he was sane enough to think 

 at all. Instead of a neat, snug cavity sufficient 

 to turn round in, he had bored into an empty hay- 

 loft. Perhaps an English sparrow would not 

 have been daunted at the prospect of filling up a 

 liaymoiv with a nest, but the flicker was. 



Or else he was not house-hunting, after all, but 

 simply a crazy flicker, crazy over holes. For now 

 his madness showed itself. Out he came, hopped 

 sidewise across a few boards, tapped, listened, 

 .and began a new hole. This, of course, opened 

 into the same mammoth cave. What of it? Not 

 where the hole opened, but the boring of it ; that 

 was the thing. So, hopping along to another 

 seam, he must have gone through again. And 

 not three times only. Day after day either he 

 or the other flickers in the neighborhood kept bor- 

 ing away, until soon the barn became riddled 

 with holes as if it had been used as a target for 

 cannon practice, shot through and through. 



Crazy over holes! At least that is the way it 

 looked to me. It looked even worse than that to 



