At the lower end of the bench was a curtain, reaching from the ceiling to the floor. Oscar drew aside this curtain, revealing a little recess about ten feet square, two sides of which were fitted up with shelves. At the end opposite the curtain was a wide window, and under it was a table filled with little boxes, containing glass eyes and an assortment of tools such as taxidermists use. The shelves were filled with stuffed birds and animals.
The most prominent object in the collection was a magnificent gray eagle, which leaned forward on his perch, with his wings half raised, his neck stretched out, and his eyes fastened upon a plump mallard standing on one foot in the corner below him, with his bill buried under his wing, and his eyes closed as if he were fast asleep; and so life-like did the eagle look that one almost expected to see him leap from his perch and bear the duck off in his talons.
There were hawks, blue-jays, crows, snow-buntings, grouse, quails, snipes, cedar-birds, and gold finches upon the shelves; in fact, almost all the varieties of the feathered creation which were to be found in the woods about Eaton were here represented. And they were all arranged with artistic taste, too.
Oscar had carefully studied the habits of every bird and animal he hunted, and in his collection there was not one that was awkwardly mounted, or that was placed in a position which the bird or animal would not have assumed during his life-time.
A red fox, on the lower shelf, was creeping along in a crouching attitude, evidently meditating an attack upon a wild goose, which stood a little distance away, engaged in arranging its plumage; a snowy owl watched with wide and solemn eyes a gray squirrel sitting upon its haunches and gnawing its way into a hickory-nut, which it held between its fore-paws; a butcher-bird was engaged in its usual occupation of impaling an insect upon a thorn; a hawk was about to begin a meal upon an unfortunate quail it had just captured; a mink had its eyes fastened upon a hare which was sitting comfortably in its form; a ruffed grouse—the last object Oscar had mounted—was standing up as straight as an arrow, evidently watching the boy as he came in.
This is the position the grouse always assumes when it is sitting in a tree and sees a hunter approaching. It draws itself up so stiffly, and remains so motionless, that the sportsman often mistakes it for a part of the limb on which it is sitting, and passes on without trying a shot at it.
The birds were all mounted on temporary perches, made by nailing two short pieces of wood together in the form of the letter T, the standard being set into a block about three inches square, to enable them to retain an upright position.
They were fastened to the perch by the wires that came down through the legs and feet, and as the wires extended into the body and assisted to keep the birds in shape, the positions of the specimens could be changed in an instant at the will of the taxidermist.
Oscar had killed and mounted every one of them himself, and took no little pride in showing them to his friends.