The birds learn to look on us as protectors and it 

 is a proud position to fill. I'd even rather be a bird 

 protector than a policeman on Broadway, 



When we are awakened, before the workman's 

 whistle, by a hullabaloo at our window, and rush out 

 in nebulous garments just in time to save our spar- 

 row colony from a hawk, it is indeed a proud moment. 



During last summer we noticed that the sparrows 

 deserted the drinking bowl for days and kept 

 raucously trying to tell us some scandal about it, 

 but it was only by a chance glance out one evening 

 that we discovered the trouble. It was a rat who 

 sneaked out to the bowl from the cellar, stealing the 

 bird bread and perhaps pouncing on sparrow orphans 

 and widows. 



A small child's rifle aimed nervously and amateur- 

 ishly fired, only served to wound the rat, and then 

 there was a frolic. All the family rushed at the rat 

 with various nice weapons, such as a chafing dish, 

 brass poker and Samurai sword, and when the spar- 

 rows saw their enemy wounded, and our efforts to 

 slaughter him, they joined us with all fear departed, 

 diving down between our weaipons, getting in the way 

 of blows, pecking the rat's back until somehow some- 

 body — sparrows or we — killed the enemy. There 



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