CHAPTER VII - SCARING THE HENS
THERE was one sport of which Jasper
Jay was over-fond. He loved to imitate the calls
of other birds; and Jasper was such a good mimic that
he often deceived his neighbors by his tricks.
It was not pleasant for a sober, elderly
bird-gentleman to come home at night from a hard day’s
work and have his wife accuse him of idling away his
time.
“You can’t deny it for
I could hear you laughing in the woods!” she
might say.
And it was not always an easy task
to convince her that what she had heard was nobody
but that noisy rascal, Jasper Jay, playing a trick
on her.
Nor did Jasper limit his droll teasing
to his own neighbors. Sometimes he hid in a tree
near the farm buildings and frightened the hens by
making a sound exactly like a certain red-shouldered
hawk, who lived in the low woods along Black Creek,
where frogs were plentiful. A fierce scream of
“Kee-you! kee-you!” was quite enough
to alarm an old hen with a big family of young chickens.
Though she might know well enough that the red-shouldered
hawk seldom made a meal of poultry, preferring frogs
and field-mice above all other food, it was only natural
that she shouldn’t care to take any chances.
The haste with which a nervous mother-hen called her
family into the chicken house when she heard that
cry of “Kee-you! kee-you!” always
amused Jasper Jay, for he never tired of the game.
Surprising as it may seem, now and
then Jasper’s hawk-call deceived even Farmer
Green himself. And sometimes he would step into
the kitchen and take his old gun off the hooks on
the wall above the wide fireplace and hurry outside
again in the hope of getting a shot at Mr. Hawk.
It happened at last that in some way Mr. Red-shouldered
Hawk heard of this trick of Jasper’s. And
that old gossip, Mr. Crow, warned Jasper Jay that
he had better be careful.
“Mr. Hawk says that you are
giving him a bad name with Farmer Green,” Mr.
Crow told Jasper one day. “Farmer Green
calls him ’that old hen-hawk,’ and, of
course, it’s not very pleasant for Mr. Hawk to
have somebody looking for him with a gun. I know
what the feeling is like, myself,” said old
Mr. Crow. “Believe me, it’s enough
to make one most uncomfortable!”
But Jasper Jay only shrieked with laughter.
“You’ll sing a different
song if Mr. Hawk catches you,” Mr. Crow snapped.
And that made Jasper Jay scream all
the louder. Then he stopped laughing and said
“Caw! caw!” in a husky voice so
like Mr. Crow’s own that the old gentleman spluttered
and fumed and all but chased Jasper out of the woods
where they were sitting at the time.
They never did get along well together old
Mr. Crow and Jasper Jay. They were cousins, you
know. But that fact did not help matters at all.
Perhaps they knew too much about each other.
“Don’t worry about me!” said Jasper
Jay at last.
“Very well!” Mr. Crow
replied stiffly. “But remember I’ve
warned you!” he croaked. And then he flew
away to his nest in a tall elm, overlooking the cornfield.