The Strange White Doves Read Online Free PDF

they are shot at continually in the corn country, crows can be pardoned for having a low opinion of man, and for being loudly outspoken when they have the chance. Their big chance, of course, comes when they can catch someone like me abroad without a gun. When it happened, I used to think I was being personally singled out for abuse. Now I realize it was just the wild talking back to all mankind.
    But such language!

7
    A GRIEVING SNAKE
    W E HUMANS are very proud of our ability to reason, but with the arrival of the doves it soon became obvious to me that pure reason is of far less importance in the world of nature than some other qualities. Reason alone, of course, would never have brought the second dove to the first. Only an intuitive feeling did that. An intuition—which is another name for ESP—seems to be rooted deep in the emotions.
    Do wild creatures actually have the same type of emotions as humans?
    They do, and it comes as a real shock even to experienced woodsmen when they suddenly discover this fact. John Kulish, a trapper for many years, tells in his book Bobcats Before Breakfast how his entire view of wildlife changed after he came upon the grieving mate of an otter he had killed. No human could have felt a greater desolation. No one knows how a wild goose feels when it loses its mate, but I can find no record of one ever taking another mate when the first is lost. Many an amateur naturalist, moreover, has seen a songbird go into a state of quivering shock when its mate has a sudden accident and then spring up bursting with joy when the other bird revives.
    To lose a mate is one thing, but what about the loss of a friend? There are friendships among animals as strong as any found among humans, as every racehorse owner knows. When a horse forms such an attachment—it may be with almost any creature from a dog to a donkey—the friend travels with the horse, or no races are won that day. If the friend dies, it may be a long time before the horse even attempts to race again. In one case I know, where the lost friend was a little donkey, the horse stopped racing entirely.
    But what of the lower forms of life?
    â€œSnakes have feelings too,” my uncle told me. “I know two very unusual stories about them that will prove it. Most people may find them hard to believe, but I assure you they are true. One happened to me, and the other to a young neighbor girl.”
    My uncle’s first story is one I’ll never forget. When he was a young man in Florida, clearing some land for a garden, he was digging out a stump when it suddenly broke open. The hollow interior, he discovered, was the home of a pair of smallish brown snakes. They happened to be the brown variety of the king snake, although he didn’t know that at the time—nor did they look small at first glance. They seemed perfectly huge. The brown variety of the king snake has markings somewhat like a rattler’s, and my uncle, who fears no man, can be pardoned for being frightened. His first reaction was to swing his mattock and try to kill both snakes. Unfortunately he killed only one.
    I say unfortunately because it would have been better if the second snake had died with the first. But it escaped unharmed, and from that day on it began to haunt him.
    That little, harmless brown snake, one of man’s best friends, watched for my uncle and followed him whenever he left the house. Often, when he was at work somewhere about the place, he would turn suddenly and see the snake only a few yards away, eyeing him steadily. Time after time, when he was sitting on his porch, he glimpsed it testing the screen wire, searching for a way to get inside.
    A man with a pair of king snakes living on his property can count himself lucky, for they are better mousers than cats, and poisonous snakes seldom live long around them. My uncle had done a terrible thing, and now a friend had become an enemy.
    My uncle was sorry, but in the beginning