BOY, BIRD AND SNAKE.
The young man's family was not large, but a part of it was young, and
he felt the responsibility. The song-sparrow is the very light and
gladness of the woods and fields. There are rarer singers, and birds
of more brilliant plumage, but he is the constant quantity. His notes
may not rival those mellow, brief ones of the blue-birds in early
spring, so sweet in their quaint inflection, which suggest all hope,
and are so striking because heard while snow may be yet upon the
ground; he may not have the wild abandon of the bobolink with that
tinkle and gurgle and thrill; he is no pretentious songster, like a
score of other birds, but he is a great part of the soul of early
summer, for he is telling, morning, noon and night, how good the world
is, how he approves of the sunshine, and how everything is all right!
And so the young man approved much of the song-sparrow, and was
interested in the movements of all his kind.
One day in May, the boy had noted something in the clump of bushes,
between the house and creek, which very much resembled a small
bird's-nest, and had at once investigated. He found it, the nest of
the song-sparrow, and, when the little gray guardian had fluttered
away, he noted the four tiny eggs, and their mottled beauty. He did
not touch them, for he had been well trained as to what should be the
relations between human beings and all singing birds, but his interest
in the progress of that essay in summer housekeeping became at once
absorbing. He announced in the house that he intended to watch over
the nest all summer, and keep off the hawks, and that when the little
eggs were hatched, and the little birds were grown, maybe he would try
to tame one. He was encouraged in the idea. It is good to teach a boy
to be protective. And when the birds were hatched, his interest
deepened.
He was half inclined, as he stood in the doorway on this particular
day, to visit the dense bushes and note the condition of affairs in
that vicinity, but, buoyant as he was, there was something in the
outlook which detained him. There was such a yellow glory to the
afternoon, and so many things were happening.
Balanced above the phlox, a humming-bird, green-backed and glittering,
hung and tasted for a moment, then flashed to where the larkspurs were.
A red-headed woodpecker swung downward on the wing to the white-brown
side of a dead elm, sounded a brief tattoo upon the surface, then dived
at a passing insect. A phoebe bird was singing somewhere. A red
squirrel sat perched squarely on the drooping limb of a hickory tree
and chewed into a plucked nut, so green that the kernel was not formed,
then dropped it to the ground, and announced in a chatter that he was a
person of importance. Great yellow butterflies, with black markings
upon their wings, floated lazily here and there, and at last settled in
a magnificent cluster upon a moist spot in a mucky place where
something pleased their fancy, and where they fed and fluttered
tremulously. There were myriads of wild bees, and a pleasant droning
filled the air, while from all about came the general soft clamor of
the forest, made up of many sounds.
The boy was satisfied with the prospect. Suddenly he started. There
was a call which was not of peacefulness. He knew the cry. He had
heard it when some bird of prey had seized a smaller one. It was the
call of the sparrow now, and it came from his clump of bushes. His
family was in danger. A hawk, perhaps, but he would have seen such a
foe in its descent. It might be a cat-bird or a weasel?
With a rush, the boy was across the garden, and as he ran he snatched
up what was for a person of such inches an ideal club, a cut of
hickory, perhaps two feet in length, not over an inch in thickness, but
tough and heavy enough for a knight errant of his years. He broke
through the slight herbage about the place where the bushes grew
thickest, and, getting into an open space, had a fair view of the
particular shrub wherein were the bird's-nest and his birdlings. He
stopped short and looked, then ran back a little, then looked again,
and straightway there rose from his throat a scream which, though
greater in volume, was almost in its character like that other wild cry
of the two sparrows who were fluttering pitifully and desperately about
their nest, tempting their own death each instant in defense of their
half-fledged young. He stood with his youthful limbs half paralyzed,
and screamed, for he saw what was most horrible, and what it seemed he
could not check nor hinder, though a cruel tragedy was going on before
his eyes!
Curled easily about the main stem of the bush, close to which, upon a
forked limb, rested the sparrow's nest, its dark coils reaching
downward and its free neck and head waving regularly to and fro, was a
monstrous black-snake, and in its jaws fluttered feebly one of the
youthful sparrows. Evidently the seizure had just been made when the
boy burst in upon the scene. The snake's eyes glittered wickedly, and
it showed no disposition to drop its prey because of the intruder. It
only reared its head and swung slowly from side to side. Lying almost
at full length upon a branching limb of the same bush, and on a level
with the nest, was a second serpent, its head raised slightly, but
motionless, awaiting, it seemed, its opportunity to seize another of
the tender brood. The parent birds flew about in converging circles in
their strait, clamoring piteously and approaching dangerously near to
the jaws of their repulsive enemies. The boy but stood and screamed.
They were the greatest black-snakes he had ever seen. Then, all at
once, he became another creature. His childish voice changed in its
key, and, club in hand, screaming still louder, he ran right at the
bush. At the same moment his frightened mother came running down the
pathway, screaming also.
As the boy leaped downward, both snakes, with wonderful swiftness,
dropped to the ground and darted across the open space of a few yards,
toward the creek. Side by side, with crests erect, they glided, and
one of them still held between his jaws the unfortunate young sparrow.
The boy did not hesitate a moment. Still making a great noise, but
hoarsely for a creature of his age, he ran to head them off and barely
passed them as they touched the water. He leaped in ahead of them and
they were beside him in an instant. The water was up to his waist. He
plunged deeper recklessly. With a cry of rage he struck at the serpent
with the bird, and struck and struck again, blindly, still giving
utterance to that odd sound, and with the fury of a young demon. The
woman had reached the bank and stood, unknowing what to do, shrieking
in maternal terror, while across the clearing a man was running. And
then a fierce chance blow, delivered with all the strength of the
maddened boy, alighted fairly, just below the head of the snake
carrying away the bird, and in a second it was done for, floating,
writhing down the stream with a broken neck, and its tiny prey loosened
and drifting away beside it.
The mother gasped in relief, but only for a moment. The boy cast one
glance at the floating reptile and the bird, and only one, then turned
to the other serpent. It had almost reached the shore, and between
that and the covert it might attain was a stretch of shrubless ground.
Already its black length was defined on the short grass when the boy
rushed from the water with uplifted club, just as his father came in
full view of the scene from the other side. With cries like those of
some young wild beast, the child ran at the snake, raining blows with
the stout club, and with rage in every feature. The black-snake,
checked in its course, turned with the constrictor's instinct and
sprang at the boy, whipping its strong coils about one of its
assailant's legs and rearing its head aloft to a level with his face.
The boy but struck and gasped and stumbled over some obstruction, and,
somehow, the snake was wrenched away, and then there was another rush
at it, another rain of blows, and it was hit as had been its mate, and
lay twisting with a broken back. The man dashed through the creek and
came upon the scene with a great stick in his hand, but its use was not
required. The only labor which devolved upon him was to tear away from
his quarry the boy who was possessed of a spirit of rage and vengeance
beyond all reasoning. Upon the heaving, tossing thing, so that he
would have been fairly in its coils had it possessed longer any power,
he leaped, striking fiercely and screaming out all the fearful terms he
knew--what would have been the wildest of all abandonment of profanity
had he but acquired the words for such performance. His father caught
him by the arm, and he struggled with him. It was simply a young
madman. Carried across the creek and held in bonds for a brief period,
he suddenly burst out sobbing, and then went to inspect the ravished
nest where the two old birds hovered mourningly about, and where the
remaining nestlings seemed dead at first, though they subsequently
recovered, so gruesomely had the fascination of their natural enemy
affected them!
What happened then? What happens when any father and mother have
occasion to consider the matter of a son, a child, bone of their bone
and flesh of their flesh, who has transgressed some rule they have set
up for him wisely, thoughtfully, but with no provision for emotional or
extraordinary contingencies, because it would be useless, since he
could not comprehend exceptions. They took him to the house. The
father looked at him queerly, but with an expression that was far
removed from anger on his face, and his mother took the young man aside
and washed him, and put on another hickory shirt, and told him that his
sparrows would raise a pretty good family after all, and that it
wouldn't be so hard for the old birds to feed three as four.
Early that same evening a six-foot father strolled over to the place of
the nearest settler, a mile or so away, and the two men walked back,
talking together as neighbors will in a new country, though they do not
so well in cities, and when they reached the creek one of them, the
father, cut a forked twig and lifted the black-snake to its full
length. Its head, raised even with his, allowed its tail to barely
touch the ground. Evidently the men were interested, and evidently one
of them was rather proud of something. But he said nothing to his son
about it. That would, in its full consideration, have involved a
licking of somebody for disobedience of orders. It was a good thing
for the bereaved song-sparrows, though. Older heads than that of the
boy were now considerate of their welfare. Lucky sparrows were they!
As for the youth, he had, that night, queer dreams, which he remembered
all his life. He was battling with the snakes again, and the fortunes
of war shifted, and there was much trouble until daylight. Then, with
the sun breaking in a blaze upon the clearing, with the ground and
trees flashing forth illuminated dew-drops, with a clangor of thousands
of melodious bird-voices--even the bereaved father song-sparrow was
singing--he was his own large self again, and went forth conquering and
to conquer. He found the murdered nestling stranded down the creek,
and buried it with ceremony. He found both dead invaders, and punched
their foul bodies with a long stick. And he wished a bear would come
and try to take a pig!
This was the boy. This was the field he grew in, the nature of his
emergence into active entity, and this may illustrate somewhat his
unconscious bent as influenced by early surroundings, while showing
some of the fixed features of heredity, for he came of a battling race.