The Snowy Plover 



This year in April it was Teddy Sanders who laid siege to my heart 

 and fairly wore me out with his nonsense. Why, he'd follow me round 

 and round till I was ready to drop, and then if I'd stop to pick up a bit 

 of a bug, he'd bunt into me and make me listen to his blarney. As if 

 I cared for his sly winks and his quivering wings and his absurd little 

 bows. But, finally, I married him to get rid of him, and we chose that 

 little hummock of sand over there for our home-site. All I had to do 

 was to crouch down and twist around and make a little hollow in the 

 sand, and Teddy hunted up the prettiest bits of shell — he was very good 

 about that — so by the time I had three eggs laid we had the most beautiful 

 white lining. And one day Teddy brought a cork and laid it down 

 beside me on the sand. And I asked him what that was for, and he said — 

 well, he said I might find it handy when I didn't want to talk. But really, 

 Teddy was awful nice; and when there weren't any people in sight, he'd 

 come up to the mound — he liked to hear me talk all right, if he did make 

 fun of me — until he had it all covered with toe-tracks. And then one 

 day a man came poking along, looking and looking and looking in the 

 sand. I slipped off when he was fifty yards away and did a special 

 skirt-dance for his misguidance; but when he saw me he only grinned and 

 went on looking. And then by and by he saw the tracks criss-cross on 

 the sand, and then he saw the eggs, for his face all lighted up, while my 

 heart stood still. But he wasn't a bad sort, after all, for he went away 

 without even touching them. 



But that afternoon the wind came up. I knew the tide was going to 

 be high that night, and I scented trouble. Teddy stood by me as I sat 

 tight on the eggs facing the wind. The wind freshened and shifted 

 to the southwest. By midnight it was blowing great guns and drenching 

 us with spray, but the tide was not due to be high till two o'clock. Well, 

 you can guess the rest. That was an awful night. By one o'clock the 

 water was spilling over into the lagoon, and a little later a great wave 

 caught us and bowled us over and over before we could rise and seek 

 shelter in the dunes. All my beautiful eggs washed away, and the whole 

 colony — there were seven pairs of us — left desolate! 



Yet that cruel, terrible ocean had the audacity to smile next day, and 

 let its soft bosom sink and swell as if it wouldn't hurt a baby lobster. And 

 the sun shone and the sand got dry and rustled, and — Oh, well, that same 

 man found me two weeks later about ten feet away from where we had our 

 first nest, sitting on three eggs that looked to him just like the first ones. 

 Teddy hadn't been able to find as many shells this time to line the nest, 

 but we made it near a white stick lying half-buried in the sand, so that we 

 could see the place a long ways off. Of course the man didn't catch me on 

 the eggs, but he found them all right, and he might have eaten them for 



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