FOREST AND STREAM. 



ATURAL EISTO 



Jim’s Story. 

The Biography of a Common Crow. 
Ir we had known, even a few weeks ago, what 
our intercourse with Jim has since taught us, we 
could never have broken up his home, slain his 
brothers and sisters and brought such calamitous 
sorrow to his parents. Yet, of all these offenses 
we stand convicted. At that time we were no 
more enlightened than the majority of mankind, 
and entertained for the crow the common preju- 
dices that forbid the possibility of his harboring 
aught but wickedness in his nature. He was the 
cunning and elusive thief who stole our corn, 
killed our young chickens, robbed song birds’ 
nests and preyed in general to a most damaging 
and annoying extent upon mankind. We knew 
full well also that he was ordinarily too clever 
to be overtaken by gun or trap, and to be so 
often outwitted and outdone by a creature of his 
size and complexion neither flattered our human 
vanity nor tended in any way to remind us of 
the bare duty of justice, when weighing the 
merits and demerits of his race. In this state of 
mind, therefore, we had no scruples in getting 
the better of him by whatever means, fair or 
foul. 
An unmistakable fagotty tuft in the uppermost 
branches of a tall red maple tree that stands in 
the meadow was thought to be too close to the 
house for the good of the fowls. The effrontery 
in selecting a site for their nest from which the 
old crows might overlook the poultry yard and 
keep account of the hatching time of the setting 
hens was not to be tolerated; and, besides all 
that, we had need of a young crow for sake of 
variety. Many kinds of pets we had reared and 
known in the course of previous years; squirrels, 
hares, muskrats, coons, foxes, hawks and sundry 
other wild things from the woods and bushes and 
streams, but never a crow. Here was our chance, 
so, with quite easy consciences, we went to the 
tall maple tree late one afternoon just in time to 
see the old mother bird fly away to the brook on 
her last foraging trip of the day. The nest was 
too far out to be reached by hand, but by the aid 
of a long stick it was loosened and tilted from 
its place among the branches, and four of the five 
haif-naked young birds came flopping to earth 
after clinging bravely for a time with beak and 
nails to the ragged edge of their ruined home. 
Then the nest came down; a bunch of roughly- 
woven sticks in the midst of which was a felt-like 
mat of roots and grass, and all as clean as a 
Dutch house. 
One of the young birds was killed outright by 
the fall; one escaped serious injury by landing 
in the bushes; two were so badly hurt as to make 
it an act of mercy to put them to death, and-the 
fifth was caught and passed intact from hand to 
hand down the tree. The two unharmed we 
brought home and made as comfortable as we 
could in a nest of excelsior with a soft woolen 
rag to act as a brooder by night. There was no 
trouble in getting them to take food. Whenever 
the hand approached they opened their red, 
abysmal mouths until the vocal chords could be 
plainly seen, all the while fluttering their nearly 
featherless flippers and uttering repeatedly ah! 
ah! ah! In a very few days they were able to 
take the sun and air on the lower limb of a pine 
tree near the house, where they might be kept 
in sight and shielded from cats, dogs, fowls, and 
especially from the fierce assaults of mocking- 
birds and woodpeckers. Dinah was a pathetic 
little creature, possessed of many winsome, femi- 
nine tricks and ways, but was delicate and much 
smaller than her brother Jim. The fall from the 
tree, or perhaps a blow from a malicious old hen 
brought about a paralytic condition. which our 
best care and nursing failed to relieve; and when 
at last her case seemed quite hopeless, when she 
had become bedridden, emaciated and suffering, 
she was humanely guillotined at the woodpile. 
Her poor little black head fell away from her 
suffering body without a gasp or a struggle, and 
the brieht purple eyes closed with the same stoic 
calmness that marked the latter days of her help- 
less illness. She was decently and tenderly laid 
to rest under an apple tree in the orchard. 
Jim, it is to be feared, was not much grieved 
by his little sister’s death. He had no more to 
await his turn in the distribution of food to fill 
his impatient maw. He grew apace and was soon 
clothed in a sleek coat of lustrous black feathers. 
In climbing about the pine tree he would some- 
times lose his footing, but soon learned the use 
of his short, stubby wings. In a few days he 
was making his way easily over all parts of the 
tree by means of a mixed locomotion of leaping 
and flying and, at last, by efforts of pure flight. 
Hitherto his food had consisted of raw or 

JIM. 
cooked beef, mutton, chicken, fish, frogs and 
sometimes a squab or an English sparrow, to- 
gether with eggs, wheat, potatoes, bread and 
sundry kinds of fruit. Some of these were not 
suited to Jim’s young digestion, and once, when 
evincing unmistakable symptoms of dyspepsia, a 
strict diet of grasshoppers quickly restored him 
to health and happiness. 
But to catch the agile grasshopper with paddle 
or hat proved an irksome occupation. Why not 
then make Jim capture his own food? This we 
did. With a butterfly net in one hand and Jim 
perched on the other, or on my hat or shoulder, 
we went afield. After every few sweeps of the 
net over the grass he was invited to stand on the 
rim while the bottom of the net was raised so 
as to bring the prey within his reach. Jim found 
this an easy method of getting a good meal and 
needed but a single lesson to interpret our pur- 
pose whenever the net was taken from its place. 
He would then promptly come, alighting on my 
shoulder, always with the gentle greeting of a 
soft-toned “Ah!” and wait for the sweeping 
process to begin. He seemed to prefer small to 
large grasshoppers, but beetles, bugs, flies, moths, 
all were fish to his net except the stinging and 
malodorous kinds which were usually  flitted 
away with a gesture of impatience but not, how- 
ever, until they had been cut or crushed to death 
in his wonderful scissors-like beak. 
The next step in his education was to teach 
him to do his own hunting quite independent of 
our aid. He would have learned this, no doubt, 
from his parents, and we wished him to be as 
well versed in the wild arts as he would have 
been had he remained subject to their tutelage. 
His requirements, moreover, were becoming a 
trifle exacting of time, energy and even of pa- 
tience, and, as an independent hunter, he would 
not only become his own purveyor but would find 
many half hours of diversion during which we 
ourselves might hope to do a little gardening or 
out-of-deor reading without the incessant inter- 
ruptions of his mischievous pranks and the re- 
peated summons to rescue some one’s cravat pin, 
a saltspoon or a half-written letter. 
The lessons were very simple and accomplished 
their purpose in a little while. We would mark 
the spot at which a large grasshopper would 
alight, approach it cautiously with Jim in hand, 
and as the grasshopper arose Jim was encour- 
aged by word and a gentle motion of the hand to 
pursue it. After a few successful chases he 
needed no further instruction, and at the present 
writing we go daily “a-hawking”’ for his game 
in fields and woods. 
Sometimes when on these tramps we flush a 
lark or other bird which Jim pursues with all his 
might but never catches. Then he invariably re- 
turns.to my hand panting and boasting as if to 
say that at least he had made a good flight and 
given the bird a terrible scare. He is never so 
entertaining or indeed so lovable as when on 
these field excursions. There are too many dis- 
tractions round about the house, in his judgment; 
nor does he like many people, even of those he 
frequently sees, and a stranger cannot be toler- 
ated. To some of these his aversion goes so far 
as to lead him to watch his chance, and in the 
course of a rapid flight deliver a right vicious 
peck on the top of the head; but in the field, 
when we have had a long ramble and stop for a 
rest under the trees, he is at peace and plays 
with all manner of objects round about—sticks, 
stones, leaves, insects and the like. 
Having exhausted his researches in these lines 
he is apt to perch on my shoulder, tug at my 
glasses, pull my mustache, peck at my teeth, 
thrust his beak through every buttonhole and 
test the strength of every button within reach, 
all he while uttering caressing little sounds, 
variations upon Ah! and Eh!—unmistakable ex- 
pressions of affection and perfect contentment. 
My helmet falls so low as to cover the frame 
of my glasses, for which he has a great liking; 
so, with the coolest deliberation and astonishing 
strength he tilts the hat to the opposite side of 
my head and out of the way of his experiments 
with these curious objects of man’s attire. Some- 
times he flies off and catches a number of grass- 
hoppers which he stores in a pelican-like sack 
under his lower mandible, and comes back. so full 
as scarcely to be able to speak. He then pro- 
ceeds tu empty them all out on my knee or my 
sleeve, looks them over as a gunner might count 
the birds from his game bag, and goes to hiding 
them in every accessible nook about my person— 
the folds of my clothing, in my partially closed 
fist, or even in my nose or mouth, if allowed to 
do so. But the hiding place most favored is the 
space under my arm, and, if after being well 
packed in this region with mutilated grasshop- 
pers and mashed pokeberries, I dare to raise my 
arm and let them fall to the ground, Jim quickly 
follows them and emits a series of harsh sounds 
of evident discontent, if not rebuke, for my 
heedlessness. 
Wisdom is so much a matter of accumulated 
experience that there is no doubt Jim will be 
wise. Investigation is his strong point—investi- 
gation of the most original and ingenious kind. 
He learns of the top and of the bottom of things, 
the inside and the outside, the temperature, taste, 
texture and any other quality of objects that his 
sharp senses may be expected to discover with 
