MY PETS
[Illustration: European Goldfinch
Page 104]
MY PETS
Real Happenings in My Aviary
By
Marshall Saunders
Author of “Beautiful Joe”
Illustrated from Photographs
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain.
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
Philadelphia
The Griffith & Rowland Press
Boston Chicago Atlanta
New York St. Louis Dallas
Copyright 1908 by the
AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY
Published August, 1908
From the Society’s own Press
_DEDICATION_
_I dedicate this book to those of my boy and girl friends who are never
satisfied with a story unless it is entirely true. While the most of
my stories are partly true, I have never before written one that is
entirely and wholly true in every particular. The story of my aviary
and the pets in it is taken from my diaries, and many of the birds are
still living and moving and having their being, and are always glad to
see any girls and boys who call on them, if they do not come in too
great numbers at one time._
_Marshall Saunders._
_Boston, January, 1908._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE STORY OF TWO OWLS 11
II. THE OWLS START ON THEIR TRAVELS 22
III. A REIGN OF ROBINS 34
IV. A NAUGHTY MOCKINGBIRD 41
V. A ROBIN AND SPARROW FRIENDSHIP 48
VI. DIXIE AND TARDY 57
VII. RABBITS AND GUINEAPIGS 66
VIII. MY PET RATS 75
IX. FAREWELL TO THE RATS AND RABBITS 83
X. A BIRD FROM OVER THE SEA 95
XI. GOOD-BYE TO THE GALLINULES 104
XII. FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH PIGEONS 111
XIII. THE HOMING PIGEON THE KING OF BIRDS 120
XIV. PRINCESS SUKEY 129
XV. PIGEONS AND HAWKS 139
XVI. SUKEY AND HER FOSTER-PIGEON 150
XVII. MINNIE POST-OFFICE 161
XVIII. MY FIRST CANARIES 168
XIX. RAISING YOUNG BIRDS 179
XX. CANARY CHARACTERISTICS 191
XXI. LITTLE PETERS 200
XXII. CRESTED CARDINALS 212
XXIII. CARDINAL BABIES 226
XXIV. SPARROWS AND SWALLOWS 239
XXV. A MOTHER CAREY’S CHICKEN 248
XXVI. SWEET-SWEET AND THE SAINT OF THE AVIARY 252
XXVII. A HUMMINGBIRD AND NATIVE AND FOREIGN FINCHES 262
XXVIII. JAPANESE ROBINS AND A BOBOLINK 275
LIST OF COLORED ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
_European Goldfinch_ _Frontispiece_
_Purple Gallinule_ _95_
_American Goldfinch_ _195_
_Red and Brazilian Cardinals_ _212_
_Indigo Bunting_ _260_
_Flying Squirrels_ _273_
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I
THE STORY OF TWO OWLS
The birds that really started me in the serious, and yet amusing task
of keeping an aviary, were two little Californian screech owls.
The year was 1899, and I was studying boy life in the charming Belmont
School, twenty-five miles from San Francisco. The grounds of the school
lie on the lower slope of hills that enclose an open valley fronting
the bay of San Francisco. A walk of twelve miles took us to the shores
of the Pacific. Close to the school were beautiful cañons that the boys
and older persons were never tired of exploring. The lads of the school
were allowed to keep dogs, horses, pigeons, poultry--indeed, any pets
they chose to have. One day, when I was up in the poultry yard, where
there were some choice bantams and game-fowl, I saw a boy trotting
about with a box in his hand.
“What have you there?” I asked.
“Four little owls,” he replied. “I got them the other day when I was
out walking, and I had their mother too, but she has flown away.”
“What are you going to do with them?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he replied thoughtfully. “I don’t want to bother with
them. I suppose it would be best to kill them.”
I looked in the box. Those four solemn-eyed, motherless balls of down
appealed to me. In southern California I had been very much taken with
the little owls that sat on hillocks, and turned their heads round
and round to look after any one riding or driving by, until it really
seemed as if they would twist them off.
I felt that I must adopt these little Northerners, so I said to the
boy, “I will take them.”
He joyfully resigned his charges, for he did not like the idea of
destroying them, and I thoughtfully pursued my way to my room; what did
owls eat?
I asked everybody I met, and the universal recommendation was, “Give
them raw meat. That is the best substitute for the birds, mice, and
insects that their parents catch for them.”
I went to the Japanese cook, and with a friendly grin he seized a huge
knife and swung himself down the hill to the meat-room.
On receiving a piece of beef, I minced it fine, and dropped small
morsels into the open beaks of my new pets. They were hungry, and after
eating, nestled down together and went to sleep.
The days are mild, but the nights are chilly about the bay of San
Francisco. So after their latest supper, I put a rubber bag of hot
water under their nest and covered them up for the night.
In the morning I hurried to their basket, and uncovered the nest I had
made for them. They were as warm as toast, and four wide-open beaks
pleaded eloquently for food. I cut up more meat, and for days fed them
when hungry, and carried them out of doors in the sunshine, where they
were objects of interest to every one about the place, especially to
the dogs that would fain have devoured them.
One Sierra collie dog, Teddy Roosevelt by name, in whose upbringing
I was assisting, used to tremble as he stared at them, partly from
jealousy, partly because he recognized lawful prey in them.
One day some one suggested gopher--that is, ground-squirrel meat--as
a change of diet. The gophers do an immense amount of damage in
California on lawns and in flower-gardens, where they burrow to get at
the tender roots.
I went to a house near by, where a gentleman was trying to get rid of
the gophers that were devastating his lawn. He put up a warning hand
when he saw me coming. A line of hose lay beside him, with which he
had been trying to flood a gopher out of his hole. Presently the poor
little fellow came struggling up. The gentleman despatched him with a
satisfied, “He is the last one. Now the grass will grow.”
He presented me with the dead body, and animated by a feeling of duty
to my owl family, I carried it home, cut off a piece, and offered it to
the owls. They would not eat it. They preferred mutton, beef, or veal.
On these they flourished.
Soon I had another meat-eating bird given to me. While walking in a
beautiful cañon, where live-oaks and ferns, green from spring rains,
abounded, one of the teachers who had strayed from the rest of the
party, came back to us with a young sparrowhawk that he had found. No
parents seemed to be near. If left on the ground it would perish. In
the light of subsequent experience, I would have put it high up on a
branch and left it, trusting to the parents to find it. At that time
I did not understand how faithful and constant birds are in following
their young, so I took it in spite of its dismal squawks, and carried
it back to the school.
My owls, by this time, had grown famously, and like children, they
began to exercise their tiny limbs. It was very amusing to see them
trying to climb from the center of their box to the top. They would
stretch out diminutive claws, mount over each other, fall back, try
again, and finally succeeded in sitting all in a row on the top,
looking with solemn, questioning eyes on the great world around them.
I put Hawkie with them, and they adopted him as a brother, and usually
kept him in the middle. It was a pretty sight to see the row of five,
with the mottled, brown bird tucked snugly between his owl friends.
When the summer vacation came, and the boys dispersed, I went with some
friends to live in a cottage across the bay of San Francisco, just
under the slope of Mount Tamalpais. At the back of the cottage was a
veranda shaded by a climbing rose. In the rose branches I put Hawkie
and my two owls, named Solomon and Betsy.
Very regretfully I had been obliged to part from two of the little
owls, for the boy who had given them to me was so pleased with the
progress they had made, that he asked for the return of a part of his
gift. I was sorry afterward that he had not let me keep them, for a cat
soon made away with them. As the summer went by, I wondered that I did
not lose my three pets. They sat all day long in the rose branches.
Daytime, of course, is sleepy time for owls, but even when dusk came
on they made no attempt to fly away, and the hawk only made one or two
half-hearted efforts to fly across the garden out into the road.
Toward autumn the owls were fully developed, and other little screech
owls had found them out, and at dusk would come about the cottage,
saying softly, “Too, who, who, who, who!”
Solomon and Betsy never seemed interested enough to respond, and every
evening I took them in the house where Hawkie went to sleep, and Betsy
and Solomon became lively, and in the gentlest and sweetest of tones
hooted for their meat.
They were tiny creatures, their bodies being not much larger than a New
England robin’s, but their eyes seemed immense. They had a peculiar
habit of staring at their food, then twisting their heads round and
round before they pounced on it. It was very amusing to see the owls
“focus,” and it became a way of entertaining our friends.
They often had a tug of war over their meat, when I gave it to them
without cutting it up. Sollie would seize one end of a piece of
beefsteak, and Betsy would grasp the other, and then they would brace
their little claws and pull until the taste of the raw flesh being too
tantalizing, one would let go to swallow a morsel, and at once lose the
whole thing.
When the autumn had come we, with other summer residents, left Mill
Valley where, I must not forget to say, numbers of beautiful birds
abounded. Some of the public-spirited citizens had imported foreign
birds in the hope of acclimating them. I was often awakened by a gay
note and a flash of red at the window, as some foreigner wished me
good-morning. The birds were protected, and the fine forests were also
protected. When we went for picnics, mounted guards would warn us that
we must light no fires under the magnificent old trees.
The owl’s next place of residence was Berkeley, where my younger
sister went to take classes in the State University. We had rented a
small cottage there, and to this day we laugh over our experiences in
moving to our new home. We had the two owls, Hawkie, the dog Teddy,
and a chipmunk that my married sister had brought me from Lake Tahoe,
that most beautiful of Californian summer resorts. How were we to take
charge of all these creatures? For we had to cross the bay of San
Francisco, then recross it to Berkeley. We finally got a large cage for
Hawkie and the owls, and put in a compartment, giving them the upper
part, and the chipmunk the lower. The dog we put on a chain.
Taking the train from Mill Valley to Sausalito, we boarded the steamer
for San Francisco, changed to another, and went across the bay to
Oakland, thence by train to Berkeley. When we arrived there it was late
in the afternoon, and my sister and I, the dog, the owls, Hawkie, and
the chipmunk, were all tired out. Indeed, the dog, who was very petted
and spoiled, and who did not enjoy traveling, had dark rings around
his eyes, and was in a peevish, mischievous condition. To my sister’s
disgust, for she being the younger was the victim, he started to run
away. She had to run after him, and came back exhausted.
To add to our troubles, we could not get into our cottage that night.
Fortunately, our landlady took boarders, and offered us a room in her
house. We gladly accepted this offer, and putting the subdued Teddy in
a tool-shed, took the birds in the house.
My sister says she never was more tired in her life than she was
that night. We were sleeping blissfully, when we were awakened by
a well-known sound. The naughty little owls, glad of the peace and
quietness of the night after the turmoil of the day, were hooting
persistently and melodiously.
“The landlady and the boarders,” gasped my sister; “they will hear and
wake up. Can’t you stop the little wretches?”
I sprang out of bed, and addressed a solemn remonstrance to Solomon
and Betsy. They were exceedingly glad to see me, and distending their
little throats, continued to hoot, their clear, sweet young voices
carrying only too well on the still Californian night air.
Then the chipmunk woke up and began to slide up and down an inclined
piece of wood in his part of the cage. We were in despair. We could
not sleep, until I had the happy thought of giving the owls a bath.
I seized Betsy, held her in a basin of water, and wet her feathers
considerably. Then I served Solomon in the same way, and for the rest
of the night the tiny little things occupied themselves in smoothing
their wet plumage. The chipmunk quieted down, and we had peace.
When we got into the cottage I had a carpenter build a small aviary
at the back of it, with a box for rainy weather. The nights were not
too cold for my hardy birds. Indeed, they were not too cold for many
semi-tropical ones. I found a bird fancier not far from me, who had
built a good-sized, open-air aviary, where he kept canaries and foreign
finches all the year round, with only a partly open, glass shelter for
the birds to use when it rained.
My sparrowhawk did not seem unhappy in my aviary, but he never had
the contented, comfortable expression that the owls had. His apathy
was pathetic, and the expression of his beautiful, cruel eyes was an
unsatisfied one. In time, I should have allowed him to go, but suddenly
he fell ill. I think I overfed him, for I got him into the habit of
taking a late supper, always leaning out the window and handing him a
piece of meat on the end of a stick before I went to bed.
I brought him into the warm kitchen, where he moped about for a few
days. Just before he died he came hopping toward the parlor, where
I sat entertaining a friend. I often took him in there on the broad
windowsill and talked to him as I sat sewing.
He stood in the doorway, gave me a peculiar look, as if to say, “I
would come in if you were alone,” hopped back to the kitchen, and in a
short time was no more.
My sister and I mourned sincerely for our pretty bird, and I had the
uncomfortable feeling that I might have done better if I had left him
in his own habitat--but then he might have starved to death if his
parents had not found him. Would death by starvation have been any more
painful than his death with me? Possibly some larger creature might
have killed him swiftly and mercifully--it was a puzzling case, and I
resolved to give up worrying about it. I had done what I considered was
best, and I tried to console myself for his death in petting the dear
little owls that had become so tame that they called to my sister and
me whenever they saw us, and loved to have us take them in our hands
and caress them.
About them I had no misgivings. They would certainly have died if I
had not adopted them, and there was no question about their happiness.
They were satisfied with a state of captivity. They had so far lost
one of their owl habits, for they kept awake nearly all day, and slept
nearly all night--and they could see quite well in the most brilliant
Californian sunlight, and that is pretty brilliant. A cat or a dog many
yards distant would cause them to raise excitedly the queer little ear
tufts that play so prominent a part in the facial expression of some
owls, and they would crack their beaks together and hiss angrily if the
enemy came too near.
Cats and dogs frightened them, and a broom merely excited them. When
strangers wanted to see the elevation of these tufts, a broom, swiftly
passed over the floor, would cause Solomon and Betsy to become very
wide awake, with feather tufts straight up in the air. I never saw
them abjectly and horribly frightened but once. A lady had brought her
handsome parrot into the room where the owls were. The poor little
mites put up their ear tufts, swayed to and fro on their perch, and
instead of packing their feathers and becoming thin and elongated in
appearance, as they did for cats and dogs, they puffed themselves out,
snapped their beaks, and uttered the loudest hissing noise I had ever
heard from them.
From their extremity of fear I concluded that their instinct told
them this danger was so imminent that they must make themselves as
formidable as possible.
The parrot was of course quickly removed, and I took care that they
should never again see another one.
[Illustration]