72 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PL A Y 



Clumber spaniels or setters, they had fine silky coats 

 which extended to their feet, little tufts of flossy fur 

 sticking out between their toes. When a dog was 

 comfortably asleep, with its feet stretched out, dream- 

 ing of partridges, the jackdaw would hop gently 

 round, and then make a sudden dive at these fluffy 

 tassels between its toes, which never failed to wake 

 the dog up with a quick sense of discomfort, which 

 a tug at the hair anywhere else on its body would 

 never have provoked. At another house, a tame 

 magpie was kept in a stable-yard with a couple of 

 kestrels. The kestrels were in the habit of sitting 

 on the sides of the water-pails set to warm in the 

 sun outside the stable doors. The magpie, being in 

 want of amusement, hit on the following plan. He 

 cautiously approached a kestrel from behind, and, 

 seizing the bird's long tail in his beak, gave it one 

 or two violent pulls and pushes, and having worked 

 the kestrel quite off its balance, with a good forward 

 push, pitched it into the pail, or so far in as its 

 flapping wings allowed. The magpie then 'saved 

 itself with great haste in the hay-rack above the 

 manger. In this case the joke was paid for ; one of 

 the kestrels, more wide-awake than usual, caught the 

 magpie as it was approaching and drove its claws 

 into the practical joker's legs until his screams brought 

 help. Sometimes the animal practical joke takes a 



