BY THE WAYSIDE 
59 
ternoon, a gentle breeze away from the 
homestead;—the dry grass under the 
flower spangled green and dead leaves 
that mulch the hazelbrush will burn 
like powder. 
All hands now set to work starting 
. 
the tire,—pulling up great bundles of 
dry grass they ignite the outer end of 
the bundle and then run along the 
edge of the “land” scattering the ig¬ 
nited grass as they go, down.one side 
and up the other. The little boy is all 
i excitement helping pa with little bun¬ 
dles of dead grass because he too must 
act his part in the new order of things; 
and soon the land is all encircled with 
flame and great clouds of vapor-like 
. smoke roll upwards and onwards sig¬ 
naling distant neighbors that they are 
burning “breaking-land” where new 
fields are being born. 
But what of our bird friends, the old 
habitants of the land, Bob-White and 
his interesting family, the Prairie 
Snipe and their big eggs or their curi¬ 
ous, odd-looking long-billed babies, the 
Brown-thrashers, Cat-bird, Bobolink 
and Lark, that filled the morning air 
with their songs of happiness and 
swelled with bird pride in anticipation 
of happy little families? What of the 
hundreds of happy bird homes that the 
morning sun brightened and warmed ? 
All,—all are gone. A black, scorched 
and desolate scar profusely sprinkled 
with wrecks of nests, scorched eggs 
and charred bodies of little baby birds, 
disfigure the face of Mother Barth. 
Oh, could 1 but command the language 
! of “Christopher North” or John Muir 
in word painting, I would BURN this 
horrible bird-tragedy into the brains 
of my readers,—young and old,—so 
they would never consent to the burn¬ 
ing of grass or bush during the nest¬ 
ing season. 
I doubt if anyone of the human 
agents of this pathetic bird-tragedy 
gave a single thought to the bird vic¬ 
tims of their tire, or even noticed a 
single distressed and bewildered 
mother bird hovering over the smok¬ 
ing ruin of her family home. 
It was not until the next day that 
the little boy realized the loss of his 
flowery play-ground and the many 
bird-nests that he had “spotted” with 
boyish ingenuity. He started for the 
“Big Snipe” nest but where was it? 
All his marks were gone, some of the 
large green plants were still standing, 
but scorched, blackened and wilted, 
DEAD, all DEAD. Here comes the 
big snipe, with silent but graceful mo¬ 
tion she sails a circle around the dis¬ 
tracted child, then utters her harsh 
call, indicating both anger and dis¬ 
tress. Soon her fellow sufferers re¬ 
spond from all points of the compass 
and the air is full of the big long-billed 
birds angrily screaming and scolding, 
now and then making threatening 
dives at the thoroughly scared and 
crying lad. Grandpa comes to the 
rescue, and to soothe the troubled 
child he tells him he may pick all the 
eggs lie wants. With his little home¬ 
made cap for basket, he starts his col¬ 
lection with the baked eggs of the big 
snipe and,—though his little bare feet 
are sorely pricked by the sharp stubs 
of the burned grass,—he soon fills his 
cap with eggs,—baked and burned,— 
large and small,—spotted, speckled 
and white. Grandpa now directs the 
way to the house and in his eager¬ 
ness to show his treasure the boy 
starts on the run, stubs his toe and 
falls. Memory fails to tell what be- 
came of the eggs and cap, but I dis¬ 
tinctly remember that Grandpa wore a 
blue peaked knit cap, doubled over on 
the side with tassel dangling from the 
tip end,—you can see a picture of it 
in Ross Brown's “Land of Thor.” 
