142 What Birds Have Done With Me 



must decide. Before I tell their story, I wish to 

 call attention to a general law. Intimate knowl- 

 edge and close association are necessary conditions 

 of real affection. Why the Dove and the Grackle? 

 I have only the one answer; I have known them 

 intimately since child-hood they are old play- 

 mates. 



"A burnt child dreads the fire" is the proverb, 

 and an analysis of the why would show that the 

 flame had burned itself deeply into the memory. 

 I not only burned my fingers but my whole hand, 

 and got a live coal into my apology for a shoe in 

 rescuing a Mourning Dove's nest from a burning 

 brush-pile. Never mind about my eye-brows and 

 my eye-winkers, I got the nest out that was just 

 beginning to smoke and one bird lived, my very 

 very first pet coming from the wild. With it 

 perched upon my shoulder, I climbed several steps 

 up toward a kingdom where things fly; it made 

 me want to fly and later when it would make cer- 

 tain little journeys in the world, I would pursue, 

 running like the wind. Panting, breathless, de- 

 spairing, certain it never would come back, it al- 

 ways came straight as an arrow for its perch on 

 my shoulder. Was ever a seven-year-old so en- 

 vied by other boys, especially after Mourny 

 learned to take a grain of corn from between my 

 teeth, fluttering before my face as it did so ? An- 

 other trick was to pry open my clinched fingers 



