You see, I was different from other birds. If I had been out of doors all the time with my own father and mother and other birds, I should have known nothing of men and women talk. I should have learned the things that out-door birds learn,—all about the clouds and winds, and bugs and flies and worms and insects, and how to get my own meals. But as it was, I had nothing to do with getting my own food, and so I naturally took to human knowledge in order to occupy my mind and my time.
One day Fessor said to Edith: “I’m going to give Scraggles a sand pile. She ought to have something to take a bath in.” Wasn’t that funny? I didn’t know what he meant. A sand pile, and a bath! But I was soon to learn. In an hour or so he came in with a large box-cover full of sand. He spread out several newspapers on the floor, and then put the sand box on top of them. Well, as soon as I saw the glistening stuff in the sand, I thought it must be something good to eat, and I went and pecked at it so hard that the sand filled up my bill, and got into my eyes and nose so that I was nearly choked. I pecked at it again and got another dose, and I danced and shook my head real hard in order to get the tickling stuff out of my nose and bill. Fessor and Edith stood by looking on, and how they laughed! They laughed, and laughed, and laughed again, for I had to scratch my head all over with my foot to make it feel comfortable after all that sand.
Then Fessor came and said: “Now you wait, Scraggles, and I’ll show you how to take a sand bath.” And he took a handful of the sand and sprinkled it all over me, and as it trickled through my feathers onto my skin, how good it felt! He did this several times, and then all at once I thought I would scratch a place for myself in the sand and then throw the sand with my feet all over my body under my wings. And that was delightful. It was a new sensation, and a good and pleasant one. I felt so fresh and bright afterwards that every day, directly Fessor came into the room after lunch, I was ready for a bath. He nearly always sprinkled the sand over me, and he must have enjoyed it almost as much as I did, for sometimes he stayed with me at the sand pile a full half-hour.
Chapter V
On the Fessor’s Desk and My Hiding-Place
Fessor used to spend an awful lot of time at his desk. The time he wasted there was more than I could ever tell, for he would be hours at a time doing nothing but moving that pen across the paper, making those nasty little dark scratches that in time I learned were called writing. When he came into his den and sat down at the desk I would come to his feet and call, and he would lower his hand for me to jump into, and then he would lift me up on the desk. I generally hunted first for a few pinion nuts, after which I wanted Fessor to play with me. Sometimes he was so busy with his “paper scratching” that he wouldn’t reply when I chirped to him. Then I got right on his paper, and hopped along between the hand that held his blotter and the hand with which he wrote, and there, right under his very nose, and generally on the spot where he wanted to write, would stand and ask him why he didn’t play with me. Sometimes he gently pushed me aside or lifted me out of his way, but generally he smiled at me—and I did love to see him smile—and would let me perch on his fingers or go through some antic or other, such as carrying me around the room on the top of his head, or holding me in his hand and swinging me to and fro as if I were in a nest on a bough swinging hard in a storm. Those were great times.
But sometimes that bothering old pen annoyed me, and I would seize it in my bill as Fessor made it scratch on the paper. As I held on he went on writing, and that used to jerk my head up and down, and, of course, it dragged me right across the paper. But I didn’t intend to let go; I wanted him to stop and talk to me, so back and forth we’d go, he trying to write with me holding onto the pen, and I determined not to let go, my head bobbing up and down to the movements of his writing and my feet slipping over the paper and smearing the ink, until I got too tired to hold on and had to let go.
Now and again he was determined not to let me touch that pen, and then we had a time. He made a barricade of his left hand to protect his writing hand, and tried to keep me away like that, but I showed him how spunky a baby sparrow could be. I pecked at the pen through his fingers, and watched for the least opening, and the moment he gave me a chance, I darted in and seized the pen. Then he tried to shake me off, generally laughing at me, and calling me a queer little birdie all the time, and he even lifted me up while I held on to the pen with my beak, and in that way tried to discourage me from fighting it. But I don’t think he ever knew how I disliked that wretched little stick. Why should it be in Fessor’s hands all the time? I wanted him to take me in his hands and go out for a walk with me, and I didn’t like his spending so much time pushing that pen back and forth.
One day, after we had had a pretty hard fight with the pen, I made a very strange discovery. When Fessor had gone away I saw that the writing on some of the sheets of paper was about me, and I’m going to let you read it. Here is what he wrote:
“Just now I put her on the sash that she might enjoy the sunshine, but the moment I began to write she flew down upon my desk and seized the pen with eager fury. To protect my pen as I write I have barricaded my writing hand with my left hand and the little creature is making desperate and frantic efforts to get inside. Every crevice she attacks, and tries to worm her way in, struggling with invincible determination and occasionally pecking at me, and seizing the end of my finger in her bill and pulling and tugging at it ferociously. Just before I reached this last word she learned how she might outwit me. She sprang upon my writing wrist over the barricade, seized the pen, and held on. Again I put her out. Again she sprang over. This time when I evicted her, she sought to crawl in under my left hand, and now stands, with crest upraised in anger, by my right hand, apparently thinking over a new plan of campaign.
“A pencil attracts her somewhat in the same way, but after a few onslaughts upon the moving pencil she gives it up; but now the battle on the pen has lasted for quite a number of minutes, and though defeated at every turn, she comes back again and again.”