L. Frank Baum Read Online Free PDF

will
escape!'
    "I glanced at the window and saw that it was indeed wide open. The
sight filled me with triumphant joy. Before the old man could get upon
his feet and reach the window I had perched upon the sill, and with one
parting cry of 'Cuck-oo!' I spread my wings and flew straight into the
air.
    "Well, I never went back to enquire if he enjoyed the trick I had
played upon him, but I've laughed many a time when I thought of the old
fellow's comic expression when a real cuckoo instead of a painted one
flew out of his ticking machine."
    As the cuckoo ended his tale the other birds joined in a chorus of
shrill laughter; but Chubbins said to them, gravely:
    "He was a smart man, though, to make a cuckoo-clock. I saw one myself,
one time, and it was a wonderful thing. The cuckoo told what time it
was every hour."
    "Was it made of wood?" asked the bluejay.
    "I don't know that," replied the boy-lark; "but of course it wasn't a
real bird."
    "It only shows," remarked the bobolink, "how greatly those humans
admire us birds. They make pictures of us, and love to keep us in cages
so they can hear us sing, and they even wear us in their bonnets after
we are dead."
    "I think that is a dreadful thing," said the goldfinch, with a shudder.
"But it only proves that men are our greatest enemies."
    "Don't forget the women," said Twinkle. "It's the women that wear birds
in their hats."
    "Mankind," said Robin Redbreast, gravely, "is the most destructive and
bloodthirsty of all the brute creation. They not only kill for food,
but through vanity and a desire for personal adornment. I have even
heard it said that they kill for amusement, being unable to restrain
their murderous desires. In this they are more cruel than the
serpents."
    "There is some excuse for the poor things," observed the bluejay, "for
nature created them dependent upon the animals and birds and fishes.
Having neither fur nor feathers to protect their poor skinny bodies,
they wear clothing made of the fleece of sheep, and skins of seals and
beavers and otters and even the humble muskrats. They cover their feet
and their hands with skins of beasts; they sleep upon the feathers of
birds; their food is the flesh of beasts and birds and fishes. No
created thing is so dependent upon others as man; therefore he is the
greatest destroyer in the world. But he is not alone in his murderous,
despoiling instinct. While you rail at man, my friends, do not forget
that birds are themselves the greatest enemies of birds."
    "Nonsense!" cried the magpie, indignantly.
    "Perhaps the less you say about this matter the better," declared the
bluejay, swinging his club in a suggestive manner, and looking sharply
at the magpie.
    "It's a slander," said the blackbird. "I'm sure you can't accuse
me
of injuring birds in any way."
    "If you are all innocent, why are we obliged to have a policeman?"
enquired the little wren, in a nervous voice.
    "Tell me," said Twinkle, appealing to the bluejay; "are the big birds
really naughty to the little ones?"
    "Why, it is the same with us as it is with men," replied the policeman.
"There are good ones and bad ones among us, and the bad ones have to be
watched. Men destroy us wantonly; other animals and the sly serpents
prey upon us and our eggs for food; but these are open enemies, and we
know how we may best avoid them. Our most dangerous foes are those
bandits of our own race who, instead of protecting their brethren,
steal our eggs and murder our young. They are not always the biggest
birds, by any means, that do these things. The crow family is known to
be treacherous, and the shrike is rightly called the 'butcher-bird,'
but there are many others that we have reason to suspect feed upon
their own race."
    "How dreadful!" exclaimed the girl-lark.
    The birds all seemed restless and uneasy at this conversation, and
looked upon one another with suspicious glances. But the bluejay
soothed them by saying:
    "After all, I suppose we imagine more evil than really exists,