702 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Nov. 30, 1912 
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160 Pages 
DICKY THE CROW. 
BY ROBERT PAGE LINCOLN. 
We located the nest where Dicky was born 
along in the month of June, when the crow 
families all over the wood we called the Oak- 
lands were busy feeding open-mouthed young¬ 
sters with the worms and mice gathered for the 
consumption of those offsprings who always 
seemed craving for nourishment, and whose 
cries, so harsh and grating, were to be heard 
everwhere when one entered the sanctity of 
the shadows, and stood for a time listening and 
taking stock of his surroundings. It. was on 
one of our rambles, and my companion sug¬ 
gested that we hunt out a nest and take pos¬ 
session of one of the youngsters to raise it at 
borne as a sort of pet. At first I would have 
nothing to do with this, but finally I consented, 
and, looking around, we found a nest high in a 
monarch white oak which was composed of 
branches and vines. It was certainly a climb 
up to it, but my companion was skilled in the 
art of tree ascending and made short shift of it. 
All the time the parent crows flew on high 
with raucous cries, now and then swooping low, 
but never endeavoring to attack the intruder. 
Arrived at the nest my companion picked out 
one of the two occupants and unceremoniously 
flung it down, and prepared to descend. The 
young crow lay there on the ground looking 
up at me with big eyes that askeci a sort of a 
mute question, evidently trying to form in his 
immature brain just what had occurred, and 
looking upon me as a monster with all its frills 
and furbishes. Gently picking it up, I put it in 
my coat and stroked the head with two fingers, 
calling it such names as come to mind. 
At once he was dubbed Dicky, and the 
christening was simple and without the least 
ceremony. The little fellow eyed me with 
patient concern, and seemed to entirely have 
forgotten about his parents which had now 
perched on nearby treetops with shrill cries of 
rage. Dicky looked at me with consideration 
in his eyes and rested on his weak legs, feebly 
swaying if he missed his balance. And so it 
came to pass, as the writers say, that Dicky 
found a home, quite unlike the home that 
would have been his out there in the silence of 
the Oaklands, to. a more practical one in my 
own place of occupation. And Dicky at once 
took possession, and it did not take many 
weeks before he was well and able to hop 
around and take things as they came. 
One of the first things that we ascertained 
was just what was best to feed him, but I 
hastily solved that problem, for I knew from 
observation that one of the main foods of the 
crow family was these grub 'worms that you 
will find curled up in the moist loam when the 
ground is turned, or in some manure pile, where 
they grow fat and husky. Dicky with eager 
cries was on the spot in a moment and flew 
here and there, or rather flapped, and picked 
them up, stowing them away in his little big 
stomach with gluttonous gurgles of glee, and 
watching our every move with those black 
little eyes of his. Angleworms he tucked down 
his throat with avidity, always finishing his 
swallowing stunt with that gurgle and a lifting 
of the head to help the fellow from the earth 
in his descent to. interior oblivion. The eating 
capacity of Dicky would have made an epicure 
blush. As a gormand, Dicky held all the cards 
in the deck, and then I do believe he had some 
up his sleeve, for you just ought to have seen 
him braced there on his two feet taking nourish¬ 
ment hand over fist. . 
Dicky grew fast and became a little aider- 
man as he sauntered up and down the rustic 
walk with his breast thrust out, cawing a shrill 
defiance to everybody and everything that did 
not seem to. please his majesty. A fine little 
fellow he was. His feathers, so slick and clean, 
were of a blue-black hue. and there was not 
one of them out of place in his make-up. His 
head was held high that he might survey every¬ 
thing that came within his dominion, and there 
was just a trace of hauteur about him that made 
him conspicuous wherever he chanced to be, 
though, as it was, he was an undeniable attrac¬ 
tion. 
Now Dicky made friends with the goat. 
At first he would have nothing to do with this 
animal, but after a few preliminary buttings by 
his goatship and a few shrill caws from Dicky, 
they adjusted themselves into the niches of 
friendship, just as goats and crows must do in 
time. Of course, we taught him to ride on the 
back of the aggressive one, and, while that 
clothes-eating individual did not like it at first, 
he soon took it as a matter of course; after 
that we would see the black fellow leaping up 
and down on that sleek back with screams of 
glee. They were two queer fellows, that goat 
and that crow, and. bless me, what a time we 
had with them! What amusement they pro¬ 
vided 11s as they rambled along, side by side, 
with sundry grunts, and caws, as the case may be. 
I have a steel-plated notion that Dicky 
firmly believed that he had conquered the world 
and all its minions, which extended as far as 
the confines of the estate, but the rooster was 
not yet met with, and his colors were not down 
by the least scintilla of conception. This leg¬ 
horn rooster did not go out of his way to beset 
the crow; it is doubtful if he ever conceived of 
the crow as a fighter, but one day wlien tney 
met, Dicky took the aggressive, and then and 
there, there was a hotly contested battle _ in 
which various and sundry feathers flew, mingling 
with the denouncing cries that issued from the 
throat of the crow. But the leghorn proved 
the victor, and Dicky, with a flap and a flutter, 
made his retreat with the rooster in hot pur¬ 
suit, bent upon doing the job up brown. But 
a handy piece of coal issuing from my good 
righ hand made him suddenly think better of 
it, and. midway in his descent, he swung away 
with his long legs working like piston rods. 
Dicky was greatly humiliated by the disgrace¬ 
ful showing he had made, and the rest of the 
day sat on top of the stone pile, with his head 
down in his feathers, looking upon the world 
with a dreary, melancholy view. Once, to be 
sure, he essayed a caw, but it was choked with 
tears and repressed sobs; even the well-fed 
worms that we sported before his beak did not 
seem to appeal to him and we left him to his 
sorrows for the day. But the next morning he 
was up and doing, harshly demanding that the 
goat be let out of the barn for his amusement, 
fluttering wildly and cawing as we lifted the 
latch. 
Dicky was a well behaved and cleanly sort 
of a fellow, and, for that matter, right in every 
way, so he had the run of the place. Hearing 
me up in the study knocking away at the type¬ 
writer, he would come up the stairs with big 
hops, walking in with a martial tread and breast 
thrust out. He never did understand the eternal 
question of: Why is a typewriter? That he was 
interested in the machine from the first time 
he laid eyes on it was evident, and it is certain 
that every time he came up the stairs it was 
with the fixed purpose of clearing the mystery, 
once and for good. He would witness my 
fingers playing over the keys, the carriage slip¬ 
ping along its well oiled path and the other 
movements that go with it. And then the bell. 
Every time the carriage had run its limit that 
bell would tinkle to his profound bewilderment. 
It then occurred to me to let him ride on the 
carriage, and after a time achieved my end, 
much to my satisfaction, for I had doubted that 
it could be done. So he often sat on one or 
another of the projecting incidentals, keeping 
his balance with an effort. But this happened 
only now and then, and I doubt whether he 
ever felt safe, as long as that bell insisted upon 
making its presence known. Often, I believe, 
he looked at me as though to say: “What's the 
use?” 
We experimented with Dicky to ascertain 
if he would consume any of the winged insects 
that are the food of other birds, but he was 
shy at accepting them, swallowing them with 
reluctance, as in the case of the gypsy moth, 
tussock moth and butterflies. But he often ate 
the hairless caterpillar. Grubs were the main 
feature of his daily dish, and worms that were 
to be found around the barn where it was damp, 
and they grew to an enofmous size. Often by 
lifting a board we would find them congregated 
there and then, with a dive Dicky got to work 
pulling them out so deftly that we could not 
have done it better. But he had a system that 
I used afterward if I wanted to pull worms out 
when but their head showed. Said Dicky, 
squeeze the head and the rest of the body 
loses its power and comes out without break¬ 
ing off. 
There were a hundred little incidents that 
always appealed to me, but one of them showed 
that he had all the mischief of a youngster in 
his heart. The washing was out on the line 
one day and starting at one end he went the 
length picking out the pins and dropping the 
clothes to the ground. Oh! it certainly ap¬ 
pealed to him, and he poised there, screaming 
with glee, as the white linens fell. It was 
rather an acrobatic stunt, too, as we noted, for 
