“What is the matter, Dixie?” I asked.
He at once flew to his box of worms, and taking the hint, I went out and dug some.
I must put the digging of worms in the past tense. Dixie has lately refused to eat them. That happens with every robin I have possessed. Old Bob gave up eating worms long ago. Robins seem to like egg-food, bread and milk, meat, and almost any kind of civilized food better than angleworms. They will all eat mealworms—the fat, yellowish worms that are raised especially for birds, but the plebeian earthworms they soon tire of. Evidently they do not require them, for Bob is in excellent condition, making seven and eight nests a summer, and being, I do not know how many years old. I have had her for nearly seven.
Last, and best loved of my robins, because I snatched him from the jaws of death, is Tardy—so named because he was a late autumn baby, being brought to me on the fifth of September. He was plump and well-favored when he came, but I made the same mistake with him that I made with Dixie—I let him bathe too early.
It is a most amusing thing to see a robin with his first bath. He is never surprised at worms. They come as a matter of course. But put a dish of water in his cage. He has never had water before, except from a medicine-dropper. He stares at this little bathtub. What is that glittering in it?
He springs forward to investigate, runs backward in fear of the gleaming, shimmering liquid. What can it be! He plucks up courage, and bravely strikes the edge of the dish. It does not strike back. He becomes bolder, and dabs his beak in the center. What is this flying into his eyes? He chokes, coughs, gets a drop of the liquid down his throat, tastes, swallows, and runs at it again.
“Hooray!” he chirps in robin joy. “It is fine! I’ll get into it,” and down he goes, and the happy beholder of a robin’s first bath has hard work to suppress a peal of laughter.
No boy with his first pants, first pony, or first anything, can excel the joy of a young robin with his first bath—and like a too-indulgent parent, I made the same mistake with Tardy that I did with Dixie, and let him have as many as he liked.
It seemed incredible to me that wild birds could or would bathe too much. Yet they do, and too late I shut Tardy up and took his bath away. The mischief had been done, and I suppose my little bird really had something like pneumonia.
I was quite upset about his illness, and made up my mind that he should not die, if I could make him live. I have nursed many birds and animals, had many a stubborn fight with their king of terrors, but I never had such hard work to keep breath in a little bird’s body as I had with Tardy.