THE MISSING TOOTH 89 



Hasty, careless, miscalculated movements are not 

 as frequent among the careful wild folk as among 

 us, perhaps ; but there is abundant evidence of their 

 occasional occurrence and of their sometimes fatal 

 results. 



Several instances are recorded of birds that have 

 been tangled in the threads of their nests ; and one 

 instance of a bluebird that was caught in the flying 

 meshes of an oriole's nest into which it had been 

 spying. 



I once found the mummied body of a chippy 

 twisting and swinging in the leafless branches of a 

 peach tree. The little creature was suspended in 

 a web of horsehair about two inches below a nest. 

 It looked as if she had brought a snarled bunch of 

 the hair and left it loose in the twigs. Later on, 

 a careless step and her foot was fast, when every 

 frantic effort for freedom only tangled her the 

 worse. In the nest above were four other tiny mum- 

 mies a double tragedy that might with care have 

 been averted. 



A similar fate befell a song sparrow that I dis- 

 covered hanging dead upon a barbed-wire fence. By 

 some chance it had slipped a foot through an open 

 place between the two twisted strands, and then, 

 fluttering along, had wedged the leg and broken it 

 in the struggle to escape. 



We have all held our breath at the hazardous 

 traveling of the squirrels in the treetops. What 



