CHAPTER I - A NOISY ROGUE
Some of the feathered folk in Pleasant
Valley said that old Mr. Crow was the noisiest person
in the neighborhood. But they must have forgotten
all about Mr. Crow’s knavish cousin, Jasper Jay.
And it was not only in summer, either, that Jasper’s
shrieks and laughter woke the echoes. Since it
was his habit to spend his winters right there in Farmer
Green’s young pines, near the foot of Blue Mountain,
on many a cold morning Jasper’s ear-splitting
“Jay! jay!” rang out on the frosty
air.
At that season Jasper often visited
the farm buildings, in the hope of finding a few kernels
of corn scattered about the door of the corn-crib.
But it seemed to make little difference to him whether
he found food there or not. If he caught the
cat out of doors he had good sport teasing her.
And he always enjoyed that.
Jasper was a bold rowdy but
handsome. And Farmer Green liked to look out
of the window early on a bleak morning and see him
in his bright blue suit frisking in and out of the
bare trees. Still, Farmer Green knew well enough
that Jasper Jay was a rogue.
“He reminds me of a bad boy,”
Johnnie Green’s father said one day. “He’s
mischievous and destructive; and he’s forever
screeching and whistling. But there’s something
about him that I can’t help liking.... Maybe
it’s because he always has such a good time.”
“He steals birds’ eggs
in summer,” Johnnie Green remarked.
“I’ve known boys to do
that,” his father answered. And Johnnie
said nothing more just then. Perhaps he was too
busy watching Jasper Jay, who had flown into the orchard
and was already breakfasting on frozen apples, which
hung here and there upon the trees.
When warm weather came, the rogue
Jasper fared better. Then there were insects
and fruit for him. And though Jasper took his
full share of Farmer Green’s strawberries, currants
and blackberries, he did him no small service by devouring
moths that would have harmed the grapes.
But in the fall Jasper scorned almost
any food except nuts, which he liked more than anything
else that is, if their shells were not too
thick. Beechnuts and chestnuts and acorns suited
him well. And he was very skilful in opening
them. He would grasp a nut firmly with his feet
and split it with his strong bill. Johnnie Green
could not crack a butternut with his father’s
hammer more quickly than Jasper could reach the inside
of a sweet beechnut.
Though Jasper hated to spend any of
his time during the nutting season by doing much else
except eat, he was so fond of nuts that he always
hid away as many as he could in cracks and crevices,
and buried them under the fallen leaves.
You see, he was like Frisky Squirrel
in that. He believed in storing nuts for the
winter. But since he had no hollow tree in which
to put them, it was only natural that he never succeeded
in finding every one of his carefully hidden nuts.
He left them in so many different places that he couldn’t
remember them all. Those that he lost in that
fashion often took root and grew into trees.
And so Jasper Jay helped Farmer Green in more ways
than one.
But no doubt Jasper would have shrieked
with laughter had anybody suggested such an idea to
him.