CHAPTER VIII - A BIT OF MISCHIEF
JASPER JAY did not heed Mr. Crow’s
warning. When he learned that Mr. Red-shouldered
Hawk was angry with him because he had imitated Mr.
Hawk’s fierce cry, “Kee-you! kee-you!”
Jasper was more pleased with himself than ever.
Scaring Farmer Green’s hens with that piercing
scream had been a good deal of fun. But making
Mr. Hawk angry was still more.
So Jasper Jay began to visit the farmyard
even oftener than before. If the mother-hens,
with their chicks, did not happen to be scratching
in the barnyard, there was always sport of some sort
to be had.
One day when Jasper was on his way
to Farmer Green’s place, he happened to meet
a blue jay friend of his known as Noisy Jake, because
he was not very quiet. In fact, one could almost
always hear his voice ringing through the woods.
“You seem to be in a hurry,”
Noisy Jake bawled. “Where are you going?”
“S-sh!” said Jasper.
“I’m going to the farmyard to have some
fun scaring the hens. But I don’t want
everybody to know it. Do you want to come along?”
Noisy Jake promptly said he did.
So the two rascals hurried across the pasture and
over the meadow toward the farm buildings.
“Now ”
said Jasper Jay, when they had reached the farmyard “now
I’ll hide in this oak here and you can hide
in that one there.” He pointed to a tree
a little further from the chicken house than the one
where he intended to perch. Naturally, it was
not like Jasper Jay to give the best seat to anybody
else.
“What’ll we do then?” Noisy Jake
asked.
“You see those hens,”
said Jasper. “I’m going to scream
like Mr. Red-shouldered Hawk. And you’ll
laugh when the hens hurry their chicks out of the
way.... If you want to, you may scream too but
not till after I have.”
Noisy Jake agreed to Jasper’s
plan. And he quickly disappeared among the branches
of the oak to which Jasper had sent him.
Then Jasper just had to stop and laugh
to himself over the fright he was going to give the
old hens. He was about to open his mouth to imitate
the cry of Mr. Hawk when something happened that made
him terrible angry.
“Kee-you! kee-you!”
The fierce scream rang out over the farmyard.
And immediately the mother-hens called to their children,
with frantic clucks, to run for their lives
into the chicken house.
Jasper Jay did not laugh at all over
the way the chicks scurried out of sight.
“Noisy Jake has played a mean
trick on me!” he said to himself. “He
went and screamed before it was his turn!”
Since he didn’t want to miss
all the fun, Jasper let out a blood-curdling
“Kee-you! kee-you!” himself, just
to hurry the last hen under cover. But, somehow,
he had to confess to himself though he
wouldn’t have admitted it to anybody else he
had to confess that Noisy Jake’s cry sounded
far more like Mr. Hawk’s than did his own.
Of course, that did not make Jasper
feel any pleasanter. He wished he had not told
Noisy Jake where he was going.
“I’ll punish him for his
meddling!” Jasper exclaimed. And he flew
straight for the tree where Noisy Jake had hidden.
But Jasper did not reach the tree.
“Kee-you! kee-you!”
The cry came from above his head. And looking
up, Jasper Jay saw Mr. Red-shouldered Hawk himself,
dropping down like lightning out of the sky.
Mr. Hawk paid not the slightest attention
to the frightened hens and their chicks. He seemed
to have eyes only for Jasper Jay. And on his
proud, cruel face there was a look of anger that made
Jasper wish he had never, never imitated Mr. Hawk’s
cry.
He was sorry now, that he had not
heeded Mr. Crow’s warning. But his cousin,
old Mr. Crow, was always looking solemn and croaking
loudly about “trouble.” It was no
wonder that people paid little attention to what he
said.