Mock, write, invent fables of moustached men. You shall never be able to render us animals ridiculous unless you first endow us with human vices, passions, and aspirations. You compel my pity, poor pariahs of the world; you who could not live for a day without us—without the wool of our friend the Sheep to make your attire, the silk of the Worm to line your coats or cover your umbrellas, for rain is often fatal to you, while the refreshing wind penetrates your thin pink skin and chills you to the heart. You doubtless wish you were a Crow like myself, to fly through the air in place of crawling along with your too solid bodies through slimy city streets. I dislike you least on horseback, and you yourselves are proud of borrowing a certain dignity from a brute; but the dignity belongs to the Horse, not to the rider, although the latter accounts it all his own, and, strange to say, thinks himself superior to the animal that carries him. Are you not weaker than the Ox or the Elephant? Does not the smallest insect become a burden to you? A Fly tickling your nose drives you mad, and in place of setting the misguided insect free, you take its life. The sting of a Gnat swells and deforms your face, and spoils the image of the God that made you; while the bite of a reptile a hundred times smaller than yourself proves fatal. Moreover, you cannot deny that you have spent whole nights in a bloodthirsty search for the Flea that has banished sleep from your pillow, and the little offender has after all evaded you. Tell me why do you grow pale before a caged Lion? It is, alas! his gentlest caress would break every bone in your frail body.
“Ah, well! We own our physical infirmity; it is of no consequence, as we are princes by our intelligence, and on that ground we defy you, Master Crow.”
You flatter yourselves, gentlemen. Do you suppose for a moment you have more ingenuity, ability, and patience than the Spider, who unaided produces the silken material and weaves the most marvellous fabric in the world? You cannot even make lint compared to it, although the cotton is grown ready to your hand. Who, like the Spider, can prevail upon his food to come to his door, and secure it so cunningly? and who so deftly can escape danger? Again, are you more crafty than the Fox, more subtle than the Serpent? You boast of your heart, and yet when you want a symbol of tenderness or devotion it is among our ranks you look for it. Show me the human mother who, like the Pelican, would daily pierce her side, or, like the Kangaroo, bear the constant burden of her little ones. Talk as you like of your paternal kindness, and the sacrifices you make to bring up your children; in short, you parade everything that will in any way minister to your own vanity. You are careful to publish your good deeds with assumed humility, that the world may trumpet them abroad. But for constancy and unobserved devotedness to her offspring the meanest bird will put mankind to the blush. Show me the father who, while attending to the duties of his office, would prepare his children’s food and rock them to sleep.
We, the birds and brutes of creation, do naturally what costs you an almost superhuman effort. We have no need of moral and religious institutions to teach us how dutifully to fill our allotted spheres. Natural instinct is our teacher, and we obey its faintest whisperings. We have no schools of music, the arts, or sciences; for all that, the Nightingale’s notes are true and harmonious, and the comb of the Bee continues to be constructed with matchless beauty and precision.
You live in families, so do we; but supposing a human family were compelled to spend an entire winter, like the poor Marmots, shut up in one dark chamber, what would be the result? I fear some broken tempers and more fractured bones.
You are proud, so is the Peacock; but the latter lives on his pride, while you frequently die of it—it chokes you.
What can I say about human courage?—simply nothing. My own good nature prompts me here to draw the veil, only adding a word on the subject of mendicity.