Now, strange as it may seem this father was no longer cruel and lazy. His lazy spirit seemed to have gone. He wanted to go at once on the chase, and hunt food for his wife and little boy.
"To-night you shall have deer meat to eat," he said, as he spread a soft skin by the fire, for the boy to lie on. Then he turned to place the child on the skin,—but no boy was there. He had no son. Only that strange bird perched, joyless and alone, over the fire, on the pole from which the kettle hung.
"Now it's done!" the bird cried again, and with that it flew out of the wigwam.
That spring the Indians discovered a new bird in the woods. The bird was too lazy to build a real nest.
This bird did not weave together twigs and moss, leaves and ferns, bits of hair and thistledown, to make a cozy, warm, safe nest for its eggs and young, as did the other birds. This bird would lay its eggs anywhere. Wherever a few sticks lay crosswise in a track, or in a little hollow of the ground, or where some twigs or dried ferns were caught loosely in a bush, there this lazy bird would lay its eggs and rear its young.
It was too lazy to build a real nest, that was safe and warm for its little ones.
The Indians called the bird "the cuckoo." But only one Indian knew how the cuckoo came to be, and why it is too lazy to build a real nest.