THE DUCK IN THE DECOY 



sight and again disappears. The curiosity of the birds 

 is fully aroused by this unaccountable performance : 

 their attention more absorbed by the dog than by the 

 food, they begin to enter the mouth of the pipe. 



Those gentle showers of grain, which the decoy 

 birds follow eagerly, are still falling. The dog, trained 

 to act as intelligently as a human being could act 

 under the circumstances, keeps showing himself 

 ever further and further up the pipe. The duck 

 follow. So great is their inquisitiveness that they 

 never realise their danger. At last all the lagging 

 fowl of the gathering have entered the pipe. Then 

 without a sound the decoy-man darts back to the 

 mouth of the pipe, where, unseen by other bunches 

 of duck on the decoy, -he suddenly shows himself to 

 the birds under the net. At the sight of him and his 

 waving handkerchief the trapped birds rise in a cloud 

 and fly up the narrowing pipe. The decoy-man, on 

 the bank, follows them at headlong speed ; a few 

 seconds later he is engaged in extracting his victims 

 one by one from the tunnel net and wringing their 

 necks. The decoy-birds have taken no notice of the 

 familiar proceedings, but are busily clearing up what 

 odd grains of corn they can find, wholly callous as 

 to the fate they have been so largely instrumental 

 in bringing upon their kin. The dead birds safely 



