CHAPTER V 
GENERAL JIM 
IM cracked his shell in a nest up in the tip of 
an old pine tree in the big swamp, and his 
‘first glimpse of the world was a vision of tree 
tops and blue sky. A baby bird, when you come 
to think of it, has considerable the better of a 
woodchuck, let us say, in the matter of environ- 
mental influences. That may be why birds are 
more attractive. But Jim, and his brother Jim 
and his sister Jim (why are crows always named 
Jim?) did not enjoy their Peter Pan-nish abode 
very long. The reason was that young Tom 
Harris knew a man who said he’d like a pet crow, 
and Tom assumed that, of course, he’d like three 
pet crows three times as much, so when Tom saw 
the nest in the swamp and heard the three babies 
crying up aloft for their dinner, as only baby 
crows can cry, he scurried home for a bag and a 
long string, returned clad in overalls (Tom was 
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