siniman] AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A QUAIL 



us for a walk quite early in the morning and we would stay out 



for hours looking, learning what to eat, eating, drinking, bathing 

 and generally learning how to be useful, honorable, dignified 

 quail citizens, able to find our food, to do something to help the 

 kind farmer who gave us a home, and to protect and car* 

 ourselves both night and day. About noon, \\v returned home 

 for a nap, to go out again about four o'clock for another meal and 

 another lesson. Then, at night, we all returned near our nest 

 and squatted about in a circle our tails pointed inside the circle 

 and our faces pointed out the better to keep watch for our enemies. 

 Father always slept outside the circle and used to call and warn 

 us to keep quiet if an owl or a snake or a weasel, or coyote or fox 

 or worst of all a man with dog and gun came near. 



"Sometimes Father would say very softly, — 'weeka-weeka' 

 which meant 'be perfectly still and hold your scent' but when he 

 said 'queet, queet, queet' we knew that meant 'fly' so we spread 

 our little short wings and whirr we flew up very quickly confusing 

 our enemy with our swift noisy motion and besides we all flew 

 away in different directions. We could gather together later 

 when we heard Father call softly 'cha-quah-kah, queet, queet,' 

 for we knew that then Father considered everything safe and we 

 could form our little circle again and try to sleep." 



"Oh, little children, promise me now that when you grow up 

 you will not go into the fields with a dog and gun looking for quail 

 for it is very hard for us to get any real rest night or day what with 

 having to sleep always in fear of man or beast. If you will 

 let us make a home on your farm and protect us a little we will 

 promise to eat the insects that kill your fruit and the weed seeds 

 that crowd out your grain and we will never ask for more than the 

 waste grain scattered about your fields." 



"Well, little children to go back to my story, before the year 

 passed in which I was born, there had been forty children born 

 in our family, but in November only twenty were left. An old 

 owl caught five, a coyote got two, a fox two and a snake one. 

 Then after the fifteenth of September when man is free to take 

 his dog and gun and hunt us came our most unhappy days. We 

 were frightened all of the time by the banging of the guns and by 

 the nasty smell of the powder. Then a dog was likely to slip up 

 on us at any moment and catch us unawares so that we lived in a 

 state of constant fear and trembling. We were afraid to eat, 



