“Because! Look how he stands!” answered Janet.
As she spoke the woodpecker tapped again.
Tap! Tap! Tappity-tap-tap! Rat-a-tat! went the hard bill of the woodpecker on the hollow limb of a tree. It was like a distant little drum.
And as surely as Ted and Janet looked, to say nothing of Trouble peering up into the trees—as surely as the children looked, when the sound of the woodpecker’s bill echoed through the woods, the crow stood on one leg. At least it seemed so to the children.
“Look! Look!” cried Janet. “He’s standing on one leg just like Mr. Jenk’s crow used to do!”
“And he has the other leg sticking out,” added Ted. “Janet, I believe this is the tame crow!” he exclaimed. “But how did it ever get away up here in the woods?”
“I don’t know,” answered his sister.
The woodpecker kept on tapping, for that was his way of getting something to eat—bugs and worms that he pulled out of holes he drilled in the rotten wood of the tree. The woodpecker cared nothing about the crow.
And as the woodpecker tapped the crow still stood on one leg, with the other, as nearly as the children could see, stuck out to one side, stiff and straight.
“That surely is Mr. Jenk’s crow!” declared Janet.