“What sort of a bird is the milamo?” asked Lanky. “What is he like?”
“Oh,” replied Hank, “he’s like a milamo. They ain’t nothin’ else jest like him.”
“Is he large or small?” asked Lanky.
“He’s rather large,” said Hank, “though not as big as an ostrich I reckon, though somewhat bigger than a crane, which he somewhat resembles in general makeup and conformation.
“In the fall when the rains comes and fills up the lakes, like they are now, the critters comes in, or used to, and feeds around the edges of the water. They’ve got long legs like stilts for wadin’ in the water, a long neck, and a long beak that they uses to bore into the soft ground for the earthworms, which is their principal food and diet.
“I ain’t talkin’ about the little puny earthworms like school boys use to fish with. Naw, sir, a milamo bird would be ashamed of his self if he et one of them kind. He digs down into the ground and ketches the big fellers, shore-nuff he-man worms that looks like inner-tubes. I’ve seen holes you could hide a hoss’s leg in where them critters ’ad been escavatin’ for grub. More than one good cow hoss has had to be shot from steppin’ in holes that these birds has made, not to say nothin’ of the good cow-hands that has had their necks broke.
“But as I was sayin’ about the milamo bird, he jest has a way of knowin’ where the big worms lives, and when he comes to a place where he knows one of them big fellers is all curled up takin’ a nap down under the ground, he sticks his bill into the soil and begins to bore and bore, walkin’ around and around. Purty soon his bill goes out of sight, then his head, then his neck, clean up to his shoulders. That’s the way you can slip up on one of ’em. If you can ketch him in jest that stage, maybe you can git sight of him.
“Well, he bores around a while in the hole he has dug; then all at once he sets back like a hoss when there’s a big steer on the other end of the rope; and you know then he’s got a-holt of one of them big worms. The more he pulls, the more the worm stretches. If he lets up the least bit, the worm jerks his head and neck back into the hole. I seen one once a-bobbin’ up and down like that for two hours and fifteen minutes before he finally got his worm.
“Well, he pulls and tussles and yanks and jerks, and finally the worm jest can’t stand it no longer and has to let go. He shoots out jest like a nigger-shooter when you turn it loose, and like as not he hits the milamo in the eye. But he’s a good-natured bird and don’t git ringy about it. Jest why he does it, I don’t know; maybe he’s so glad to git the worm out, or maybe he sees the joke’s on him, after all; anyhow, when the worm comes out and hits him in the eye, he jest naturally gits tickled and rears back on his hind legs and laughs through his beak so you can hear him a mile or more.”
“I see,” said Lanky. “A strange bird.”