Mockingbird, Cardinal, Indigo-bird, and Nonpareil
One gray Saturday in January, when the wind rushed through the trees, making the frozen branches clash with the sound of metal rather than wood, and it was too cold to snow, Tommy Todd came to the kitchen door at “the General’s” carrying a large and unwieldy bundle carefully wrapt in an old quilt.
The door was opened by Matilda, the old coloured woman, who had been “the General’s” cook in her youth, staying on as caretaker during the years when the house had been closed. “What you got dere, sonny? Sumpin’ live, ’cause I kin hear hit scratchin’. Don’t say yer bringin’ in a trap o’ rats, ’cause if dere’s anythink I mislike ’ticular, it is dem.”
“No, mammy; it isn’t rats, it’s a bird,” said Tommy, beginning to unwind the quilt which covered a long cage made of wood and stout wires. When he had succeeded in freeing it from the cover, which, being ragged, caught on the wires, he lifted the cage to the kitchen table, where the light came full upon it. There, hopping nervously to and fro between the perches, was a gray bird about the size of a Robin. Its wings and tail had a browner wash than the rest of its back, while some of its tail-feathers and its underparts were white, though now soiled and rather ragged from chafing against the bars. As it moved about, it whisked its tail to and fro, in very much the same way as our Catbirds and Brown Thrashers.
Matilda adjusted her big spectacles, grumbling as she did so, “Doan you know, chile, dat Missy doan like birds to be shet up in cages, and be prisoners, and sole away from home no mor’n de General would ’low folks to be shet from liberty an’ traded away? I ’spect she’ll be powerful mad when she sees dis yere. Whar yeh done git hit?” Then, as she drew near the cage and saw the bird plainly, which for a moment stopped its fluttering, she cried, “For de love ob Heaven, honey! it’s a Mocker, and my ole eyes ain’t seen one since de ole cabin hit burn down, and we was all scattered out’en, and left Lou’siana for to git Norf!
“My! but what birds dem Mockers were. I kin just year ’em now.” And Matilda seated herself by the table, pushed back her glasses, and closed her eyes.
“Winter wa’n’t well ober ’fore dey began to sing up, and come peepin’ around de cabins and in de road bushes lookin’ fer a nest-place. Sometimes dey put it in de thick bush ober top de swamp, but more times dey put it close in de rose vines, like as if dey t’ought snakes wouldn’t likely git ’em dere, ’cause snakes is as set to git Mockers as de ole one in de garden ob Eden was bound ter git Ebe.
“Dat nest, hit was kinder throwed together ob sticks, but de beddin’ in hit was good an soft, for de Mockers knew mighty well whar ter find ole cotton fluff to make a linin’. An’, while all this was doin’, how dey did sing! Day wasn’t long ’nough fer him, ’cause ’long towards noon his froat hit git dry and he’d go way down de orange grove an’ rest him jest a li’l bit, and den come out again an’ git nearer and nearer to de cabin, an’ when de sun hit role away to bed an’ de moon-up come, he’d git from de rose vine to de roof, an’ den up to de chimley edge an’ sing straight down at yer. Laws, honey, yer couldn’t never tell in daylight what birds was singin’, de real ones or him a-mockin’ ob dem. De Red Bird with de topknot, de Blue Jay, de li’l Wren wif de sassy tail, de Hangnest (Oriole), or de Blue Sparrow might all be singin’, for all I know’d, or hit might be only he a-mockin’ of ’em better than dey knew how demselves.
“But when hit come night, and eb’ry one was home at de quarters, an’ some was singin’, an’ some playin’ de banjo, an’ de smell from de orange groves risin’ up powerful on de wind, and sun-down t’ree four hours gone, den when we heard all dem birds a-singin’, we knew it was de Mocker, an’ sometimes he wouldn’t stop all the night until de light hit slip right from silber to gold, an’ den copper, an’ ’twas sun-up again; an’ in dose days most eb’ry one had a Mocker in a cage. But here I be runnin’ on ’bout de times when de Lord he let folks an’ wild birds both be bought an’ sold. Tell me, honey, whar ye done git him? Shore he neber was flyin’ round about up yere in de cold an’ snow—him what lubs de sun-up ’way down Lou’siana way.”
“I didn’t put him in a cage, Aunt Tilda,” said Tommy, earnestly; “it is this way. He belonged to old Ned that works of summers for my Uncle Eph over at Bridgeton, and then goes home every year down South at Christmas, to spend the cold weather. This year he has hurt his leg, and is sick and can’t go, and has to stay in Bridgeton Hospital. So, as he used to know ‘the General,’ and he’s heard that Gray Lady loves birds, he told me to bring his Mocker over here, and ask her if she’d keep it safe and feed it until real warm spring weather, and then hang the cage outside, and open the door, and let it fly away if it would. ’Cause he thinks somehow it would find the way home if it wants to.
“He fed it well, and cared for it, and never thought about its being unhappy in a cage until he had to go to the hospital, and be shut in, and couldn’t go home South, perhaps, any more. Then I guess he knew how his Mocker might feel, too. I think Gray Lady will keep him, even though it says on the Bird Law posters that you mustn’t keep a wild bird dead or alive or have its nest or eggs. Because if Sheriff Blake arrested her, he knows old Ned and Gray Lady could explain it all so’s she wouldn’t be fined.”
“What is it that Gray Lady can explain so that she need not be fined?” said a voice from the store-room on the other side of the entry way, and “sheself” walked in; “sheself” being Matilda’s name for her mistress when she wished to use a term that she considered more dignified than the homely one of “Missy.”
Then Tommy repeated his explanation, while Matilda stood looking at the Mockingbird and muttering to herself of the many happenings of her slave days, happy as well as sad, that the sight of him recalled.
“Of course I will keep the Mockingbird until spring,” said Gray Lady, “and then I will hang the cage in the porch, open the door, but still keep it well supplied with food, so that he may come and go, and if his heart leads him back towards his southern birthplace, be sure that he will join the flock of some of his northern kindred and in their company reach home.”
“Do we have any kind of Mockingbird up here?” asked Tommy, his eyes opening in wonder.
“Not real brothers of the Mockingbird, though he has half a dozen in the southwestern part of the country, but two first cousins, and half a dozen second cousins. Let us take the Mocker up to the playroom and hang his cage in the warm window by the chimney, where the sun will shine on him whenever the clouds let it peep through. Then I will tell you all who his cousins are, and about three other American birds that for many years were caught and kept prisoners in cages and sold out of their native land.”
The children were all gathered upstairs by the time Gray Lady arrived, followed by Tommy, carrying the cage.
“I had a Robin in a cage, once, and a Catbird, and grandma and Aunt Mary always have Canaries. Why is it against the law to keep wild birds in cages? That Mockingbird doesn’t seem to mind it a bit; now that he’s smoothed down his feathers, and has begun to eat, he acts real happy,” said Eliza Clausen, after they had looked at the newcomer and heard the story of his being sent to Gray Lady.
“There are two reasons why wild birds should never be kept in cages except for really scientific study, or to help them when they are exposed to cold, or are ill and maimed in some way. The first reason is that when Nature placed birds in certain localities provided with the best sorts of beaks, feet, etc., to make them able to earn their living, it was done because there was work there for them to do that they could perform better than anything else. They were a part of the Great Plan for preventing insect life (which also has its uses) from increasing too much and doing damage. This is the practical way of considering birds for what the Wise Men call their ‘economic value.’ These birds may be able to hold their own against the birds of prey, that in the beginning were doubtless made to keep the smaller birds from becoming too numerous and upsetting the balance of the Plan, but when man came in, and not only destroyed them for some fancied damage to his crops, but took the young from the nest, or trapped the old birds, and sold them into captivity where they could no longer follow the creative law, to ‘increase and multiply,’ the danger became grave.
“The second reason, however, is one that our own kind hearts can understand the best, and that is the misery of the bird born wild when he feels himself a captive. If he outlives the first misery, and seems to become resigned, he may become content in a way, but he can never forget the liberty he has lost, nor can we, in any way, make up to him, by mere food and creature-comforts, the ecstasy of the wild life. The very fact that the healthful joy of flight and choice in mating is denied him is enough.
“I did not realize this when I was a girl, and I also kept cage birds like every one else; it was not because I was cruel, simply that I had never thought of the matter any more than my friends, until one day, being ill and shut in my room, like poor old Ned in the hospital, I watched the fluttering of a Painted Bunting or Nonpareil that my father had bought me.
“This bird is one of the southern Sparrows, in size no larger than a Chippy. Its plumage is tropical in its beauty, deep blue head and neck, red underparts, glistening green back, green-and-red wings, with a reddish tail; in short, a glittering opal copied in feathers. Its cage was roomy, and it had the best of food, and fresh water for bathing and drinking, while the shelf in the window, on which it stood, was filled with flowering plants, up through the branches of which it could look. But, oh, the expression of that bird’s body! I watched its every motion; the head thrown backward, searching in vain for a loophole of escape between the bars, the quivering of its wings as the impulse for freedom, and the company of its kind, swept over it! Sometimes, late in the night, when I awoke and looked toward it, I could see that it was awake and its wings trembling with the thought of dawn that it could not fly to meet. Then I knew, even if it became cowed, and forgot its natural instincts so far as to be dumbly content as a prisoner, that the real life of the bird would be as dead as if a bullet had ended it, and though it was late winter, February, I felt that I must give it liberty.
“I told my father, and he sympathized with me as usual, listened to my story, and then, packing the cage safely, had it sent by special express to a family friend, who was wintering in Florida, with the request that she liberate the prisoner. For, as we could not get it to its winter haunt in the tropics, this seemed next best, and it would soon meet the flocks of its kin on the return trip.
“So the bird was freed, and once more felt the joy of being lifted on his wings whither he would go, and whatever loneliness he may have suffered after that, he had gained liberty, which is the right of the least of God’s creatures.
“Of the four American birds that were most commonly caged, the Mockingbird and Cardinal have always been the most popular, and this is what some of the writers have said about taking them into captivity.