William Martin
THE BLUEJAY
Said Jim Baker: "There's more to a bluejay than to any other creature. He has more kinds of feeling than any other creature; and mind you, whatever a bluejay feels, he can put into words. No common words either, but out-and-out book-talk. You never see a jay at a loss for a word.
"You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, because he has feathers on him. Otherwise, he is just as human as you are.
"Yes, sir; a jay is everything that a man is. A jay can laugh, a jay can gossip, a jay can feel ashamed, just as well as you do, maybe better. And there's another thing: in good, clean, out-and-out scolding, a bluejay can beat anything alive.
"Seven years ago the last man about here but me moved away. There stands his house—a log house with just one big room and no more: no ceiling, nothing between the rafters and the floor.
"Well, one Sunday morning I was sitting out here in front of my cabin, with my cat, taking the sun, when a bluejay flew down on that house with an acorn in his mouth.
"'Hello,' says he, 'I reckon here's something.' When he spoke, the acorn fell out of his mouth and rolled down on the roof. He didn't care; his mind was on the thing he had found.
"It was a knot-hole in the roof. He cocked his head to one side, shut one eye, and put the other to the hole, like a 'possum looking down a jug.'