Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography

by Marshall Saunders

A boy said that he had persuaded some of his friends who were going fishing, to put their bait worms into a dish of boiling water to kill them before they started, and also to promise him that as soon as they took their fish out of the water, they would kill them by a sharp blow on the back of the head. They were all the more ready to do this, when he told them that their fish would taste better when cooked, if they had been killed as soon as they were taken from the water into the air.

A little girl had gotten her mother to say that she would never again put lobsters into cold water and slowly boil them to death. She had also stopped a man in the street who was carrying a pair of fowls with their heads down, and asked him if he would kindly reverse their position. The man told her that the fowls didn't mind, and she pursed up her small mouth and showed the band how she said to him, "I would prefer the opinion of the hens." Then she said he had laughed at her, and said, "Certainly, little lady," and had gone off carrying them as she wanted him to. She had also reasoned with different boys outside the village who were throwing stones at birds and frogs, and sticking butterflies, and had invited them to come to the Band of Mercy.

This child seemed to have done more than any one else for dumb animals. She had taken around a petition to the village boys, asking them not to search for birds' eggs, and she had even gone into her father's stable, and asked him to hold her up, so that she could look into the horses' mouths to see if their teeth wanted filing or were decayed. When her father laughed at her, she told him that horses often suffer terrible pain from their teeth, and that sometimes a runaway is caused by a metal bit striking against the exposed nerve in the tooth of a horse that has become almost frantic with pain.

She was a very gentle girl, and I think by the way that she spoke that her father loved her dearly, for she told how much trouble he had taken to make some tiny houses for her that she wanted for the wrens that came about their farm. She told him that those little birds are so good at catching insects that they ought to give all their time to it, and not have any worry about making houses. Her father made their homes very small, so that the English sparrows could not get in and crowd them out.

A boy said that he had gotten a pot of paint, and painted in large letters on the fences around his father's farm: "Spare the toads, don't kill the birds. Every bird killed is a loss to the country."

"That reminds me," said the president, "to ask the girls what they have done about the millinery business."

"I have told my mother," said a tall, serious-faced girl, "that I think it is wrong to wear bird feathers, and she has promised to give up wearing any of them except ostrich plumes."

Mrs. Wood asked permission to say a few words just here, and the president said: "Certainly, we are always glad to hear from you."

She went up on the platform, and faced the roomful of children. "Dear boys and girls," she began, "I have had some papers sent me from Boston, giving some facts about the killing of our birds, and I want to state a few of them to you: You all know that nearly every tree and plant that grows swarms with insect life, and that they couldn't grow if the birds didn't eat the insects that would devour their foliage. All day long, the little beaks of the birds are busy. The dear little rose-breasted gross-beak carefully examines the potato plants, and picks off the beetles, the martins destroy weevil, the quail and grouse family eats the chinch-bug, the woodpeckers dig the worms from the trees, and many other birds eat the flies and gnats and mosquitoes that torment us so. No flying or crawling creature escapes their sharp little eyes. A great Frenchman says that if it weren't for the birds human beings would perish from the face of the earth. They are doing all this for us, and how are we rewarding them? All over America they are hunted and killed. Five million birds must be caught every year for American women to wear in their hats and bonnets. Just think of it, girls, Isn't it dreadful? Five million innocent, hardworking, beautiful birds killed, that thoughtless girls and women may ornament themselves with their little dead bodies. One million bobolinks have been killed in one month near Philadelphia. Seventy song-birds were sent from one Long Island village to New York milliners.

"In Florida, cruel men shoot the mother birds on their nests while they are rearing their young, because their plumage is prettiest at that time, The little ones cry pitifully, and starve to death. Every bird of the rarer kinds that is killed, such as humming birds, orioles and kingfishers, means the death of several others--that is, the young that starve to death, the wounded that fly away to die, and those whose plumage is so torn that it is not fit to put in a fine lady's bonnet. In some cases where birds have gay wings, and the hunters do not wish the rest of the body, they tear off the wings from the living bird, and throw it away to die.