“No. That’s the way they do—hatch one egg at a time. They all belong to the same pair.”
I felt a little incredulous, but my attention was taken up then by a semicircle of little animals arranged about two feet from the nesting-place.
“Why, they’re all big mice,” I said.
“No; nearly all young rats,” said Mercer, counting. “Twenty-two,” he cried, “and all fresh. Why, they must have been caught last night. That’s a fine mouse,” he cried, taking one up by its tail.
“Why, that must be a young rat,” I said. “That little one’s a mouse.”
“No; this is a field mouse. Look at his long tail and long ears. The rats have got shorter, thicker tails, and look thicker altogether.”
“Now then, are you young gents a-coming down?” shouted Jem.
“Yes. All right. Directly. Oh, isn’t that fellow a beauty!” he continued, throwing down the mouse he had lifted back into its place in the owls’ larder. “I say, don’t the old ones keep up a good supply!”
A second summons from the man made us prepare to descend, the full-grown owl making no effort to escape, but blinking at us, and making a soft, hissing noise. The goblin-looking younger one, however, gaped widely, and seemed to tumble over backwards from the weight of its head. It was so deplorable and old-looking a creature that it seemed impossible that it could ever grow into a soft, thickly feathered bird like the other, and I said so.
“Oh, but it will,” said Mercer; “all birds that I know of, except ducks and chickens and geese, are horridly ugly till they are fledged. Young thrushes and rooks are nasty-looking, big-eyed, naked things at first. There: you go on down.”