King Cole: A Biography 



By SUSAN M. MORSE 



KING COLE was only a common Crow, but a bird of such sagacity 

 that I feel a true account of him and his doings would be interest- 

 ing in these pages. He was a Canadian by birth and was brought 

 home in a big boy's cap, one holiday afternoon, to his three sisters — I being 

 one of them. Our brother had found the little fellow entangled in a pile 

 of dead brushwood, where he had probably been deserted by his family. 



Our big brother advised a worm diet for our charge, so we selected a 

 corner behind the barn, where the mould was soft and rich and abounded 

 in worms, and King Cole very soon learned to know the spot. He had the 

 oddest way of going to the place. Wherever he happened to be at the time, 

 whether near or far, he would start up quite suddenly, alert, as if struck 

 with the idea of being hungry. Recovering himself quickly, of^ he would 

 fly scolding and screaming at the top of his voice for some one to come and 

 turn up the worms for him. As he grew older he was able to forage for 

 himself, but he always did so distinctly under protest. He much preferred 

 having the worms unearthed for him, and would sit on a rail near by and 

 scream himself hoarse in order to attract our attention. If one of us did 

 not soon appear, he would stalk around the corner to look for us. If no 

 one was in sight (to tease him, we would often hide), back he would flounce, 

 scolding all the time, and set to work himself with an air of deep disgust, as 

 though he thought himself very hardly used. If one of us arrived at this 

 stage of the proceedings, he would fly to us, flapping his wings and snapping 

 his beak in a passion, and by muttering, croaking and screaming express his 

 entire disapproval of our treatment of him. On our taking up the spade, his 

 protest would subside into little mollified grunts and caws of anticipa- 

 tion. This change in his voice was almost articulate, and most expressive. 

 He would watch eagerly for the worms, skipping warily around the spade to 

 avoid the earth, and when he saw one would pounce upon it, gobbling and 

 screaming at the same time, making the most outrageous noise imaginable. 



In a few weeks King Cole was a full-grown Crow and as large 

 and glossy a one as you could wish to see. To keep him at home we 

 were obliged to clip his wings, and it was only when his feathers grew again 

 and we neglected clipping them afresh that he began those flights abroad 

 that got him in such bad repute among the neighbors. King Cole's tricks 

 were without number — his mischief endless — his curiosity boundless. A 

 tied -up paper parcel was a prize he dearly loved to come upon. He would 

 deftly untie the string with his beak and strip ofif the wrappings in less than 

 no time, and his peepings and peerings at the contents were a caution to see. 

 Anything with a cover into which he could not pry was pain and grief to 

 him. I have watched him sit for an hour on the top of a covered tobacco 



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