Sophy peeked over the pile of straw hats in the window and had a good look at the photograph as Varney deftly held it so that it could be seen from that direction without appearing to do so.
We were greatly entertained by the story.
“Say, Perfessor,” asked Bill, “what do them fowls an’ their young ones feed on when they don’t git offen the snow an’ go down fer frogs? Do they have to have the frogs fer their complexions?”
“That’s the strange part of it,” replied Varney. “You see they sort o’ lead double lives. Nature is wonderful in all her works. In the Himalayas there’s a small red mosquito that has never been found except away above the timber line. They have ’em out west in this country, too. They sometimes cover the snow so thick that it looks like blood, an’ the little turks patter ’round on the drifts an’ eat ’em with voracity, an’ the big ones do, too.”
“‘Voracity,’ what’s that—sump’n their mixed with?” asked Bill.
“No, it means their awful appetite.”
“I’d s’pose them skeets ’ud make the turkey meat taste kin’ o’ nippy an’ prickly, sort o’ red-pepper like,” observed Bill, winking solemnly in our direction. “It oughta be hot stuff.”
“The insects make the finest kind o’ food for ’em,” continued Varney, ignoring Bill’s gentle raillery, and the incredulous smiles of the rest of us. “When the mosquito crop’s extra good they get so fat they can’t fly or run very far, and are easily caught. When they’re lean they c’n run like a race horse. The bird that’s in the picture weighed nearly seventy pounds when ’e was captured. He couldn’t fly, an’ ’e was chased into a cleft in a big rock and a net was slipped over ’im. The man that caught ’im was named Bungush Swamee, an ’e was a famous hunter. You see everybody has funny names in India.”
“What was that Bungush feller doin’ up there with a net?” asked Pop Wilkins. “Did ’e s’pect to find fish?”
“No, he took it up there for that very purpose. He wanted to catch ’is birds alive, without injury, so ’e c’d sell ’em to the museums an’ menageries. One year he caught seven an’ shipped ’em to the Zoo in Bombay, an’ that’s how that Frenchman I just spoke of happened to try the eggs. They laid ’em in the Zoo and the keeper o’ the Zoo was a friend o’ his.