216 My Neighbor's Wood-Shed 



open ? I once saw, it was in summer, a 

 huge gray spider show effectual fight and the 

 wr en the little house-wren apparently 

 suffered from the poison of the enraged 

 arachnid's bite ; but such an occurrence is 

 doubtless quite unusual. But all this hunting 

 for food was quite commonplace in compar- 

 ison to the exhibition of the bird's scanso- 

 rial ability. To people with poor eyesight 

 the bird would certainly be taken for a 

 mouse, and I do not think the latter ever 

 ran where the wren could not follow. 

 There will always be in a wood-shed, as 

 elsewhere, some inaccessible nook that sooner 

 or later attrafts attention and arouses a deep 

 desire to investigate. More than once I 

 noticed it while loitering at my neighbor's. 

 The poor bird sometimes found that neither 

 wings nor legs were available, and the little 

 fellow's annoyance became supreme. The 

 effort to poise like a humming-bird before a 

 flower was a flat failure, though I have seen 

 a crow accomplish this difficult feat success- 

 fully, and then it was, as if to soothe its 

 irritation, the bird would break forth in a 

 series of sweet notes that was something 

 more than a faint echo of the marvellous 



