FOREST AND STREAM. 

INA\ 
[FEB. 24, 1906. 
JIRAIL JUISTORNY 

Jim’s Story. 

The Biography of a Common Crow. 
(Concluded from page 263.) 
LIKE other sensitive and reflective beings, Jim. 
is subject to moods. When playful and gay he 
flies restlessly from tree to tree or roof to roof, 
now rising high in the air over the lawn and 
fields, now swooping and darting through all 
manner of curves as if his steering gear had got 
awry, or the ‘bare pleasure of living was too 
much for his reason. At other times a sullen fit 
seizes him and he sits with humped shoulders 
and ruffled feathers, brooding, perhaps, over the 
mischance of being a crow but more probably re- 
penting some article of his very miscellaneous 
diet. Again, the demon of mischief possesses 
him, and this is the most prevalent of all his 
moods, since he spends much time in doing 
things he ought not to do; tearing books and 
papers, dropping cups and vases or other fragile 
articles of bric-a-brac from mantles or shelves, 
and swallowing sundry small objects not meant 
for crow food. 
One day the mistress of the house found him 
in her room from which she hied him with a cer- 
tain emphasis of gesture and ejaculation. Fol- 
lowing him to the veranda he was found sitting 
unconcernedly on the back of a chair from which 
point he restored to her without objection or ado 
and by the simplest act of emesis the following 
articles: Six pearl buttons, four hooks and eyes 
and one silver collar button. But such acts as 
these are only by the way or incidental to the 
love of research and not of mischief prepense. 
The real purposive tricks of deviltry, teasing and 
“pure cussedness,” are just as recognizable as 
are those of the traditional bad. boy, who breaks 
his neighbor’s window panes, ties a tin can to 
his pet cat, or stones his chickens to death. 
Having been reproved for tearing the paper 
from the wall, Jim finds that to be the act most 
promising of a sensation, therefore he slips in at 
the front door, hops up the stairway and tears 
off strips of the wall paper with which he flies 
away laughing, one would say, as soon as de- 
tected. He goes into the flower garden from 
which he has been driven again and again, and 
tears the bloom from plant after plant with use- 
less and riotous wantonness. When surprised in 
the act he scurries away to a high tree or to the 
house top, settles his wings two or three times, 
wipes. his bill and evidently thinks it a fine joke 
and one worthy to be repeated with the first op- 
portunity. Once he sat by my side on the fence 
watching, and, I hoped, admiring with me the 
wonderful beauty of a new brood of little 
guineas. My attention being diverted for a mo- 
ment, Jim swooped down, pierced the skull of 
one of the little ones by a single stroke of his 
bill and flew off to the kitchen roof, followed this 
time by a fusillade of sticks, stones and male- 
dictions. He was not hungry and had no use for 
the little guinea any more than has the boy for 
the neighbors’ cats. He was impelled to the act 
partly because the crow instinct had not been 
overcome by the moral and esthetic suiasion that 
his education had aimed to apply but chiefly by 
pure mischief, 
On another occasion the pantry door was in- 
cautiously left standing wide open. On a table 
within were long rows of jars just filled with 
newly-made jellies and jams nearly ready to be 
sealed. No one was within sight and everything 
was propitious for a raid. The mucky tracks and 
traces discovered a few minutes later, showed 
that Jim must have waded through the stiffening 
jelly and splashed into the jam of nearly every 
jar on the table. Then the maid came in and he 
flew into the dining room, where he besmeared 
the backs of the chairs and the tablecloth, and 
-when his master was called to punish him by 
putting him into a cage, he wiped off what re- 
mained of the well-mixed preserves upon his 
custodian’s coat front and sleeves. This per- 
formance might have been accredited to his ever- 
yearning spirit of research but for the evidence 
of his having pranced back and forth over those 
jars and the wide wake of stickiness over tables, 
napkins and chairs plainly proving that the work 
was inspired by the reckless and sportive demon 
that possessed him. 
Among Jim’s companions are four dogs—a 
collie, a cocker spaniel, a fox terrier and an Irish 
terrier—as different in character and in their re- 
sponse to impressions as in physical traits. The 
fox terrier is a bit headstrong or perhaps some- 
what “spoiled,” but they are all good fellows 
however—intelligent, amiable and well-mannered. 
Now, from the first these dogs were warned to 
treat Jim Crow with the consideration due a 
helpless little foundling come into the family 
group; not to run over him or hustle him off the 
porch or steal his food. The injunctions were 
strictly and most commendably heeded, and for 
a time there prevailed a state of almost disdain- 
ful indifference between them. The dogs ignored 
Jim’s presence and Jim concerned -himself with 
them only occasionally when he suppressed some 
act of undue familiarity by ruffling his feathers, 
dropping his wings like a turkey cock and aud- 
ibly snapping his beak. But as his wings grew 
stronger Jim discovered that with prudence, hav- 
ing always an eye to a safe line of retreat, he 
could count upon endless fun in teasing the dogs. 
The old collie is, lying asleep on the porch. 
Jim lightly drops down beside him and tugs at 
separate hairs of his tail. Usually no account 
is taken of this. Then he tips along behind him 
and, leaning well forward, gently pulls the hairs 
of his ears or tickles his nose. To this the dog 
responds by a sleepy motion of his paw, as if 
brushing away a fly, then after several feints Jim 
gives him a sharp dig and is off and away before 
the dog can rise to his feet with a futile snarl 
and snap, and moves off grumbling to look for a 
place more promising of an undisturbed siesta. 
The fox terrier is more irascible, more alert 
and more active than the others, and Jim is 
therefore apt to have his sport with this dog dur- 
ing the time of our walks abroad, when he will 
sweep by from the rear and deliver one agegra- 
vating little peck in passing. The dog hotly pur- 
sues and springs high in the air after him, but 
Jim’s clever estimates of speed and distance have 
always saved him. Five minutes after such epi- 
sodes the crow and the dogs may be seen fam- 
iliarly grouped about some object of common 
interest, a hare’s burrow. a mouse’s nest, or a 
land terrapin, and all ill-feeling or vindictive- 
ness, if any existed, will have vanished. 
Indeed, it would seem that Jim regards the 
dogs as his natural and most cherished compan- 
ions, and takes the liveliest interest in their pas- 
times. When they start a hare which they pur- 
sue with much excitement and noisy yelping, 
Jim has learned to recognize the signal, no mat- 
ter from what distance it may come—a half-mile 
or a mile away—and instantly drops any occupa- 
tion of the moment, hurries off to the scene of 
action and joins in the chase, flying along over 
the heads of the dogs until the bunny is caught 
or run to earth. Luckily the latter is the more 
common event. 
A few days ago, however, the unregenerate 
boys of the house went off with guns, and hav- 
ing wounded a hare, Jim is said to have outsped 
the dogs and, landing several times upon the 
hare, turned it away from the stone wall for 
which it was making, and so secured its capture. 
When the boys returned with four hares hanging 
to their belts they insisted that Jim was the best 
dog of the pack. 
Jim treats the cats in much the same manner 
as the dogs, I have seen him tweak the tail of 
a large Maltese tommy who could have made 
short work of him, but that he regards him in 
the light of a harmless joker. The pigeons, too, 
are subjects upon which Jim frequently vents his 
deviltry. He dashes into their midst in quite a 
hawk-like fashion as they sit sunning themselves 
on the roof, scattering and pursuing them in their 
flight with no other intent than that of the tease 
and the bully. He excites the hens to a cackling 
fury by pretending to carry off their chicks, and 
of a certain brown pullet he makes life wretched 
by swooping down upon her whenever she comes 
within sight, and hovering over her head with 
fluttering wings and dangling legs, until the poor 
fowl makes a break for the bushes with feathers 
all on end and a vociferous clatter of anger and 
fear, 
Indeed along this line of conduct the list of 
Jim’s deeds might be extended to’ rival the ex- 
ploits of Gargantua, both as to number and in- 
genuity of device; but to make this little history 
more true to nature and to Jim, mention must 
be made of certain acts of a different character 
in his daily life and about which there may be 
room to question the correctness of interpreta- 
tion. He seems to be distinctly imitative. When 
I go into the flower garden and engage in hand- 
weeding the beds and borders Jim goes earnestly 
to work at the same business. Unfortunately, 
the distinction of weed and cultivated plant is 
too trifling for his discrimination, and as a con- 
sequence he has more than once undone in a few 
minutes the work of weeks, by uprooting valu- 
able seedlings or by heedless meddling with ap- 
pliances used in connection with plant experi- 
ments. Again, when I kneel on the lawn in order 
to cut out a plantain or other troublsome tres- 
passer, Jim comes and begins the same operation 
nearby and often waddles over to the scene of 
my digging and lays hold of my knife with his 
beak. I should not like to assert that he wishes 
to borrow it for the job that he has found too 
much for his implement, but the suggestion is 
irresistible when the act is witnessed. If I be 
driving a nail, he comes alongside and follows 
the hammer by a bobbing motion of his head and 
even incautiously seizes the nail as if he would 
direct it. 
Of certain objects he lives in a state of grave 
suspicion or positive fear. He shuns all large 
cattle, such as horses or cows, and seems to con- 
sider vehicles or machinery of any sort as pos- 
sible traps. He goes with me to within a few 
feet of the stable, but no proffer of food or caress 
can induce him to enter. The lawn mower is a 
fussy abomination, and he for a long time de- 
clined to follow me when mounted on my bicycle. 
To guns, however, he pays little attention and 
sits on my shoulder with little apparent concern 
other than meddlesome curiosity while I load and 
fire a rifle. He has also learned that the wheel- 
barrow is not only free from danger but is an 
object with which is associated fat grubs and 
juicy earth worms, so that now he rides on the 
barrow with childish excitement and pleasure, 
and is apt to give forth a challenging caw to any- 
one passing lest his performance should go un- 
noticed, 
More recently Jim has so far overcome his 
mistrust of wheels that he started off to-day and 
followed me on a spin of eight or ten miles over 
roads entirely new to him and through a village 
where we met many dreaded animals as well as 
many astonished and demonstrative villagers. 
Jim’s performances had evidently been heralded 
about the country, for the people crowded in 
doorways and on street corners much as if his 
coming had been duly announced by the blazing 
posters telling of “The Greatest Show on 
Earth.’ I was even permitted to experience for 
a few short minutes the bliss I had so often 
coveted as a boy of being actually a figure in the 
procession, 
