The study of birds (and a most delightful study too) is steadily on the increase, and a great deal of good is being done. A great deal more might be done if older people would take more pains in impressing upon all children never to harm in any way our feathered friends.
I have prepared this little book of simple true tales, not for the literary critic to pull to pieces, but simply to give pleasure to all lovers of pets, hoping it may be of some help to those who wish to tame and train their birds or cats.
I especially want it to teach children to love and be kind to all living creatures God has put upon the earth. He has never put anything here that has not some use, no matter how some may fear and hate the lower animals.
Never hurt anything, and only kill when it is necessary, and then do it in the quickest and most humane way.
I shall be glad to hear from any children who have pets, and will aid them all I can in taming and training them.
Caroline Crowninshield Bascom.
19 Green St., Seneca Falls, N. Y.
I have always been passionately fond of animals, and would like to make pets of them all. During the winter I keep a free-lunch counter on my bedroom window-sill for my little friends, the English sparrows. Often there will be two dozen partaking of the crumbs at the same time, no two looking alike, and making one think of a bootblack spread in New York. Their table manners are not always the best, I am sorry to say, and there is often a great deal of cuffing, scratching, and angry words.
When the first warm days of spring come, they all say “bon jour,” but the cold days of autumn bring them back in full force, and it is like welcoming old friends.
During the summer I keep a hospital, and I have had some very curious cases. The children bring in to me all of the stray birds they find or take away from cats. Often I have had ten at a time. Some die from want of food when I cannot make them eat, but more often from wounds received from cats or boys.
It is heartrending to have brought to me a handsome pair of robins all torn to pieces, and feel there is nothing I can do to save their lives, when I know their babies in the nests are crying for food, and will soon die from starvation.
My hospital really opened one June by my mother picking up off the front sidewalk a little brown bird which could not have been more than two weeks old. I had been ill many months, and my mother and friends had done all they could to make the days pass as quickly as possible for me. So when my mother saw the little orphan, she put him in her handkerchief and brought him to my room, thinking it might amuse me, and I took him inside the bed. After an hour he seemed very happy and not at all afraid.
I looked him over carefully, but found him uninjured. I took him to an open window, expecting to see him try to fly away, but he did not seem to have the slightest intention of doing so.
The first day I could not get him to eat anything until night, when he drank milk from an after-dinner coffee-spoon. After that he took little pieces of bread soaked in milk from my tongue or lips. I fed him in that way for several days, then he would take it out of my fingers. He lived on bread and milk for two weeks; after that he ate anything I did, – all kinds of vegetables, mushrooms, and ice-cream. He liked to sit on my shoulder and take his food off my fork.
I had some kind of nourishment every two hours, and Little Billee knew very well when my maid came to my room with a salver that there was something on it to eat or drink, and he was wild until he could get on my hand or shoulder. He drank milk from my tumbler, and would not drink water out of anything but my medicine glass. When Little Billee would see me sit down in the morning with an orange on a plate, he’d fly upon his cage, then over into my lap, and sit on the first finger of my left hand, and eat the orange from my spoon. At first he could not crack his own seeds, and, as he was very fond of them, I used to do it for him. Later he could crack them himself, but preferred eating them outside his cage, and his hemp seed he would always bring over and eat on the rug in front of my bed.
He was very fond of little orange-blossom biscuit. I kept some in a tin box under a table by the side of my bed. For several days, every time I would reach out of bed and tap on the box, Little Billee would come running for a piece. One day I was visiting with a friend, and we forgot all about the bird. Soon we heard rap, tap, tap, peep, peep, peep, and there was Little Billee standing by the box waiting for a piece. After that he would come many times a day. If I sent him away with a small piece, he would return directly for a large one.
I had quite a time teaching him to stay in his cage. The first day I put him in, I was afraid he would die of fright, and I left the cage on the floor for two days before he ventured in. After he had been going in and out for some time, I closed the door, but he was frightened quite as much as at first, and he would not go near the cage the rest of the day. Finally I tried taking the cage on my lap and shutting him in; he did not seem afraid then, and soon he did not mind being shut up in the morning when I was in my dressing-room, but he much preferred going in and out at his own sweet will. If I left him shut up in his cage and went back to bed, he was frantic until he was let out, and would then get in bed with me. For the first two weeks he was not happy if he was not on me somewhere. He would stay in bed with me for hours at a time, but when he became more accustomed to the house he would play on the floor with a little piece of paper, cotton, or a ribbon, and eat his seeds and biscuit.
