The Strange White Doves Read Online Free PDF Page A

something is wrong. If they are unable to right it, they can pour out sympathy in unlimited quantities.
    There is another kind of hunter, who never carries a weapon, who always sees the wildlife around him. He goes forth to discover and admire, not to kill. And since all living things, even plants, like to be loved and told how wonderful they are, they are not reluctant about showing themselves when this person comes along.
    Most hunters of this kind are naturalists. By that I mean amateur naturalists, people who would not dream of destroying a creature so it could be stuffed for a museum. Many of them, if they discovered something very rare, wouldn’t tell even their best friends about it for fear the news would spread and tragedy result. As a rule these people are loners, and when they go forth to see what they can see, the world of nature usually meets them more than halfway. Sometimes it practically snows them under.
    In one of his outdoor books, Edwin Way Teale tells of a friend who is always surrounded by a cloud of birds every time she goes walking in her woods. They alight on her hands, head, arms and shoulders until they no longer have standing room. Other nature writers tell of similar cases, and they are by no means as rare as you would think. One, of course, is my neighbor the beekeeper. I have never seen him without a considerable chorus of feathered companionship, though most of his friends fly away at my approach. Another such case was my great-uncle, a ripsnorting old rascal who was never quite tamed even in his final days. But the birds, as well as the small animals around his farm, thought he was great. When he became too ancient to stir far from the rocking chair on his porch, the birds would come to him. They would settle all around him, and take turns singing!
    And there was the last keeper of St. Marks Light, down on the Gulf. I had heard that he had a very special way with wild geese, so I went there once with a photographer, hoping to get pictures for a magazine article about him. A number of people have managed to get on speaking terms with wild geese, but it has always been done within the confines of a well-protected sanctuary. As far as I know, the keeper of St. Marks Light was the only man who could stand in the open and actually have wild geese come to his call. They would appear as if from nowhere, swoop down from the sky, circle close around him, and feed from his hand. He loved those geese, and the geese loved him—but we never managed to get good pictures of man and birds together, not even with a telephoto lens! If the photographer and I crept closer than a quarter of a mile, those wary geese would take off as if we were contaminated!
    To us they were merely the subject for a magazine article that would put money in our pockets. All we wanted was to get the job done and collect for our efforts. But those contrary geese would not cooperate! We were furious. Those crazy, ding-ratted, blankety-blank birds! We could have wrung their necks.
    Our feelings about them were just the opposite of those of the lighthouse keeper, so the geese simply did not care for our company.
    On the other hand, crows have never cared for my company either, but instead of shunning me as the geese did, they always took another approach. When I lived in the Midwest, where I met so many squirrels, I used to go hiking daily, and would often be followed by a great flock of derisive crows, telling me how little they thought of me.
    If you have never been told off and put in your place by a flock of crows, you have no idea how most wild creatures feel about humans. Usually the wild is voiceless when man is around, but a crow always has something to say. Furthermore he has a terrific vocabulary and can give full expression to his feelings. It has been years since I crossed an Illinois cornfield with a raucous escort of some fifty cawing, haw-hawing black demons, but my ears still burn with the things they said.
    Since