Alice was more and more puzzled, but she thought there was no use in saying anything till the pigeon had finished.
"As if it wasn't trouble enough hatching the eggs!" said the pigeon, "without being on the look out for serpents, day and night! Why, I haven't had a wink of sleep these three weeks!"
"I'm very sorry you've been annoyed," said Alice, beginning to see its meaning.
"And just as I'd taken the highest tree in the wood," said the pigeon raising its voice to a shriek, "and was just thinking I was free of 'em at last, they must needs come down from the sky! Ugh! Serpent!"
"But I'm not a serpent," said Alice, "I'm a—I'm a—"
"Well! What are you?" said the pigeon, "I see you're trying to invent something."
"I—I'm a little girl," said Alice, rather doubtfully, as she remembered the number of changes she had gone through.
"A likely story indeed!" said the pigeon, "I've seen a good many of them in my time, but never one with such a neck as yours! No, you're a serpent, I know that well enough! I suppose you'll tell me next that you never tasted an egg!"
"I have tasted eggs, certainly," said Alice, who was a very truthful child, "but indeed I do'n't want any of yours. I do'n't like them raw."
"Well, be off, then!" said the pigeon, and settled down into its nest again. Alice crouched down among the trees, as well as she could, as her neck kept getting entangled among the branches, and several times she had to stop and untwist it. Soon she remembered the pieces of mushroom which she still held in her hands, and set to work very carefully, nibbling first at one and then at the other, and growing sometimes taller and sometimes shorter, until she had succeeded in bringing herself down to her usual size.