ibe Ue BON GB UL Gb Eel IN 2 
Summer in the Country 
By BERTHA E. JAQUES 
Following are some further selections from “A Country Quest,” by 
Mrs. Jaques, completing the description of a summer spent at their home 
in Michigan. 
JULY 
I may be compelled to go out of the free lunch business. The Doctor 
says I am giving all the birds to understand they may help themselves to 
anything they see. I neglected to make an exception of his seed-planting 
operations. He prepared a pint of golden bantam corn to plant and left it 
standing in the garden while he went for the omnipresent fertilizer to fill 
in the hills. When he returned a few minutes later, the blackbirds—to 
which he added a modifying expletive—had just reached the bottom of the 
pan, upon which their beaks were beating a tattoo for more. 
Of course, I don’t encourage things of this kind any more than I like 
to have them steal things from the back porch. Only the fact it was steam- 
ing hot kept them from carrying off a cherry pie the other day; as it was, 
they warmed their feet and left a few patterns before they gave up the 
game. What is cute in a catbird is detestable in a blackbird because of his 
unlovely character. But with all his smartness he may be fooled. After a 
shelf cleaning and the discovery of some musty cereals and damp corn- 
flakes, they were mixed into balls and put on the table. It was new in 
shape, color and smell, and I believe birds do smell their food. All of the 
birds in turn looked at it and flew away with the grouchy air seen at some 
human tables. Even the sparrows who decline nothing looked at the repast 
dejectedly from. neighboring branches. 
Said I in a voice of conviction, “That is perfectly good food and if you 
don’t eat it Si’s chickens will get it.” They did, but I did not have to take 
it to them. Six young white leghorn pullets, led by that same aforementioned 
intuition, wandered through the orchard and with one accord fell upon the 
despised and rejected meal. Grackles will eat anything to keep others from 
getting it. When they saw the white chickens gobbling, they came down in 
a body and took charge of the feast. The chickens having had their fill 
walked away and twenty-three grackles waded in. The young ones with 
their rusty coats and more rusty voices begged in strangling tones to be fed. 
When the table is empty, the sporting members of the tribe use it for 
athletic contests and exhibitions of the two-step. So far their fights have 
been bloodless, being confined to threatening passes of the beaks and harm- 
less wing flapping. At the moment there are six grackles standing in the 
pan of water, eyeing the empty table with mournful air and clacking their 
eternal clack to call my attention to it. * * * * 
The roadside has its tragedies though they may be unobserved. Milk- 
weed, with its thick green leaves and cloyingly sweet waxy blossoms, attracts 
like an Oriental beauty, but suggests something baneful in its ready 
destruction of intruders. Bees she invites to partake of her liberal store of 
honey, but flies are trapped and their lifeless bodies hang as a warning to 
