“My name is ——. My room-mate’s name is ——. I am in here for overdraft on a bank; my room-mate, who is sitting at my elbow, is in here for murder. We have a paper here giving an account of a duck killed in Louisiana with a tag on its leg marked ‘Have faith in God.’ We have looked this up in our Bible; we find that the reference given is correct. We would be pleased to hear from you, to know more about your interesting life with the birds. However, if you do not see fit to write us, we trust you will not be offended at getting a letter from here. We remain,
“Yours,
_________________
Arkansas State Prison”
Little did I think when I stamped this verse on the tag that the duck carried away, that the message would ever find its way into a prison cell, and lodge in the heart of a murderer.
CHAPTER XVIII.
How Wild Ducks Conceal Their Nests.
Possibly there is none of our birds that can conceal its nest better than the wild duck. This may be due to the fact that she has to be father and mother both.
In the first place she selects a spot where the foliage, dry sticks or weeds, are exactly the same color as herself. I once found a black duck’s nest right beside an oak stump that was charred black by being partly burned away, and really if you weren’t careful you might look at her all day and not see her, as she was exactly the same color.
Yes, I know there are a lot of people who will say “Oh, that just happened that way.” I tell you right here it did not happen that way. This is a gift to help these creatures out, and there is no man on earth can conceal anything better than a wild duck can her nest. An intelligent man once asked me how I hid when I hunted wild geese. I told him I covered myself with a blanket, and in a few weeks I saw him returning from a hunt carrying a red horse blanket.
After the duck has the spot selected she gathers a few twigs and so forth, but she lays the eggs right on the bare ground, going to her nest late at night and leaving long before the stars disappear in the morning. As soon as the crows start scouring the country, she flies back to the vicinity of her nest. I have seen a duck give a crow an aerial battle three or four times a day. But of course two crows are one too many for her.