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Show Of all our pets among land birds, I select for special notice the hooded crow. He is not a beautiful bird certainly; but he makes up for his not handsome appearance by his exceeding cleverness. We had one in particular for many years. We called him Crabbie because of his sidelong mode of progression when not on wing. His liberty was seldom restricted, unless he had been guilty of some prank more than usually audacious, and then his punishment would be a day or two's confinement, which he greatly hated; but he soon managed to coax us into giving him his freedom, and manifested the utmost gratitude to his liberator. His moral sense was at least as obtuse as a cat's. He delighted in ?[stealing], simply as it ?[?coined] for his own sake, not because he could make any use of his plunder. Spoons, needles, wires, ?[pirns] of thread, balls of worsted, little one's shoes and socks, anything and everything that was portable to which he could get access, he would carry off and carefully hide, covering them over with bits of turf; and then wiping his bill, in the most self satisfied manner, hop away as though he had performed a highly ?[?uctitorious]action. Alas for the half knitted stocking which might be left on a chair or a table, if Crabbie was about! The wires would quickly be pulled out and removed and the stocking torn to tatters. I caught him one day-and an intensely droll figure he cut-hopping out of doors with a pipe in his bill. On another occasion he made off with a piece of tobacco. We never could make out whether he had any intention of himself trying the soothing effects of the weed. He had, or affected to have, a great dislike to bare feet, on the little boys who often came to the house with baskets of [*locks] or with ?[*gers], had but too good reason to know. On the whole, he was on terms of very good friendship with the dogs and cats, but it always afforded him exquisite delight to tease them, particularly to pinch the point of an outstretched tail, if the owner thereof happened to be asleep; and a pinch of his sharp and powerful bill, whatever pleasure it might afford him to inflict, was no joke to his victim. Once an old woman was bringing a ?[cucarage] to the house. Just as she was crossing a stile, Crabbie's quick eye fell on the spotless cap which adorned the old body's head. It was an opportunity too tempting to be resisted. Down he swooped, neatly pinched off her head dress, and with a triumphant "Cra, Cra," flew away with it. Not being aware there was any such "uncanny brute" about the house, her ?[coualornation] may be imagined; and when she appeared at the back door bereft of her white muslin ?[mutch], and told, in tones of horrified agitation, how she had been despoiled of it by a "craw," [crow] she met with much sympathy from the domestics, who hated Crabbie with a most perfect hatred. And little wonder they hated him, for he teased and tormented them unmercifully, and by his never ending tricks often imposed upon them a great amount of additional work. For instance, clothes on the bleaching green he seemed to regard as spread out for the special purpose of affording him an opportunity of showing how completely he could soil them. At any rate, what he did, whenever he got the chance, was to march and hop all over them in the most systematic manner, with the dirtiest effect. -Ledger. |
