Chumfo, the Super-sense 



fuls, as if living creatures could not be still or con- 

 tent with any one thing, even a good thing, in a 

 world of endless variety. Look again, more 

 closely, and see how they merely taste of the 

 abundance on your table, and straightway leave it 

 for a morsel that the wind blows from under their 

 beaks, and that they are bound to have if it takes 

 all winter. Every other minute they flit to a 

 branch above the table, look about alertly, meas- 

 ure the world once more, make sure of the dog 

 that he is asleep, and of the sky that it holds no 

 hawk; then they wipe their bills carefully, using 

 a twig for a napkin, and down to the table they go 

 to begin all over again. So every bite is for them 

 a feast renewed, a feast with all the spices of the 

 new, the fresh, the unexpected and the advent- 

 urous in it. 



Or again, when you enter the wilderness remote 

 from men, here is a deer slipping shadow-like 

 through the shadowy twilight, daintily tasting 

 twenty varieties of food in as many minutes, and 

 keeping tabs on every living or moving or growing 

 thing while she eats; or a fox, which seems to 

 float along like thistle-down in the wind, halting, 

 listening, testing the air-smells as one would ap- 

 preciate a varied landscape, playing Columbus to 

 every nook or brush-pile and finding in it some- 

 thing that no explorer ever found before. Such is 



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