Entertaining the Crow 



The modem scarecrow is a yelling gymnast that twirls with the wind 



By George Worts 





I 



T is rather common knowl- 

 edge that scarecrows are there 

 to scare the crows away. If the 

 unhappy figure, flapping in the breeze 

 on its hickory limbs in the center of the 

 cornfield, happens also to discourage the 

 advances of the sparrow and the coyote, 

 your average farmer is perfectly satisfied. 



For the same reasons that childless indi- 

 viduals know much more about raising sons 

 and daughters than do fathers and mothers, 

 persons who have never been nearer a 

 farm than the observation platform of a 

 fast train, know all about scaring the crows 

 away. 



Recently, several humorists, disguised as 

 inventors, brightened up the columns of the 

 Patent Ofhce Gazette with various im- 

 provements upon the time honored, 

 flapping, cornfield variety of scarecrow. 

 While their inventions are labelled 

 scarecrows or "crow jacks," the 

 descriptions which accompany them 

 are delicious satire. The inventors 

 seem to have decided to furnish 

 everybody with a laugh, from the 

 employes in the patent ofhce to the 

 crows in the cornfield. Each one 

 of the little group of humorists was 

 positive that the average farmer is 

 not pleased with the dividends, so 

 to speak, which his old suit of 

 clothes draped over the usual 

 hickory limbs or old broomsticks 

 has been declaring. 



Before these merry-makers ap- 

 peared with their side-splitting 



The cornfield 

 gladiator who 

 waves his swords 

 with the wind 



it had been our opinion 

 most futile occupation in 

 was that of the man who 

 goes through all the mental gymnastics 

 necessary to calculate, for example, that 

 if all of the beans baked in Boston 

 during one week were placed end to end, 

 they would stretch from Hoboken, N. J., 

 to Mars, with enough left over to pave a 

 road twenty feet wide from Gallapolis, 

 Ohio, to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. But 

 we overlooked the occupation of inventing 

 improvements for old man scarecrow. 



On the other hand, why waste 

 time improving the hickory-and- 

 old-clothes scarecrow of our fore- 

 fathers? Why not adopt the 

 scheme that a New York man 

 applies to hens? 



"The hen is instinctively a well 

 mannered bird," says this poultry- 

 man. "Be polite to her, and she 

 will roost awake nights, hatching 

 schemes to increase her output." 



What stands in the way of applying 

 this plan to scarecrows? A crow jack 

 with a phonograph attachment which 

 repeated in a soothing voice at inter- 

 vals, "Please go 'way, Mr. Crow," 

 should find the birds too polite to 

 steal other folks' corn. They would 

 flap their wings in embarrassment 

 and fly guiltily away. This sugges- 

 tion is offered to scarecrow inventors 

 absolutely gratis. Compared with 

 this idea, some of the schemes of the 

 humorist-inventors are lacking in 



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