202 What Birds Have Done With Me 



It was really outrageous to have allowed a 

 little fellow to go through that marsh so soon 

 after that unsuccessful Mountain Lion hunt, but 

 there is this to be said, that the big scare made 

 many others, afterward encountered, seem com- 

 paratively trifling. It was doubtless a Mountain 

 Lion, but they called it a Panther, and it took 

 up my trail the moment I got out in the night 

 alone. I thought I was giving him a good run 

 for his money, as the saying goes, but he some 

 way outran me and when I got to the fifth pile 

 of rails, he rushed from the sixth pile, his old 

 lurking place, and sprang upon me. Undoubt- 

 edly a person may be paralyzed with fear, and I 

 must have been, for I made no attempt to escape. 

 The impact of the creature's body knocked me 

 over, and the creature began licking my face, 

 naturally enough as it was our big dog that had 

 come to meet me. That I did not choke him to 

 death through pure joy, is little short of a miracle, 

 but strangely enough I was more afraid of the 

 sure-enough Panther than I had ever been. 



This digression is simply to establish the fact 

 that bird courtship may be of so fascinating a 

 character as to actually overcome the most deadly 

 fear. 



A booming noise, unlike anything else on earth, 

 starting at the earth and seemingly going around 

 in a circle, up, up in the sky, and when it had 



