JACKDAW HUMOUR

Evening Star, Issue 21715, 9 May 1934, Page 12

JACKDAW HUMOUR

A STUDY AT CLOSE QUARTERS

I picked him up l in a tangle of nettles, his wings - draggled and useless after the storm that had passed across the night before (writes “ N.D.;”, in an exchange). He lunged with his wings strongly, and twisted his head round on his shoulders to look up at me. I touched his head, close-pelted like moleskin, but he clipped my finger viciously. in his beak and his throat vibrated with a childish “ chaack.” Thus it was that he came to live with me. He was inevitably Jack from the first plaintive squawk. He proclaimed himself with gusto all the way home, so that passers-by started and looked round and eyed me suspiciously. But for a day after he got home he said no word. Then he was reconciled, and ate ray bread and salt—ant eggs fresh dug from the garden. From that moment he ate • largely, but with discernment. Liver and lean beef he loved, with a dessert of cherries or ' grapes. For boiled egg he would go to lengths, as 1 discovered when he dropped from his stance on riiy shoulder at breakfast one morning, snatched my half-eaten egg from j its cup, and, swept out through the window to gulp it on the lawn. He came back to clean his beak on my hair,' for eggs are messy things, and" Jack: was a bird of clean habits. Never was he happier than at the daily ceremony of the bath. As the bowl was placed on the lawn he would make a first sally, dip his toes gingerly like a bathing belle, and scuttle out at the other side, squawking. His next approach was devious. He would circle round the bath sidelong, head cocked, wicked, pale eyes averted, until his courage was equal to immersion. A sudden dash, a frenzy of clapping wings, and the ceremony was over, and Jack in the apple tree, shrunken and spiky. I have no wonder now that the jackdaw will build his . nest indifferent to the .rumbling of traffic and the din of the market place. Though he was country-bred, Jack was never baffled by things man-made. Or only once. He never solved the strangeness of a mirror, and he would sit long minutes on the mantelpiece clock, tapping with experimental beak at the jackdaw through the looking-glass. But when the clock trembled and struck beneath him he was in no way disconcerted. Perhaps the chime of bells, after long generations in church steeples, is in jackdaw blood. He had a love of all things that shone, and a passion for the salt-spoon, though he showed no further interest in it when he had' sent it jingling over the edge of the dining table. Then he would his eye at me and get ready to hop vertically as I thrust at him. For he treated mo with no respect. He would peck my ankle as we played together on the lawn, and then scuttle before me with flailing wings as 1 chased him. Most of all he loved a stroll. Ho would sit staidly on my shoulder, making periodic sallies of his own, sweeping ahead a hundred yards to the branch of some tree, and then planing hack like a carbon-winged gull. It was an apprehensive experience at first, for as like as not he would drop on my head and plunge his claws into my scalp; hut soon he learned precision, and would alight ns gently as a butterfly. Then he would tweak my ear. It was on one of those expeditions that we stood together on the edge of a large, open-air swimming bath. Jack was much interested, for he had never seen so much water before. Suddenly an island appeared—the bald head of an emerging diver. With a delighted cry Jack sailed down and alighted. The island submerged abruptly. Jack flapped in the water. By a great effort Vic lifted himself nut and reached the roof of a shed. 1 had to call many times. He was suspicious: on 'his dignity, So was the bald head. Jack and I never travelled that way again. There came the dawn of a malicious humour in Jack, He took to persecuting the thrushes that hitherto had had the freedom of the lawn. He flew at human game—innocent pedestrians, and, on one occasion, a youth pumping up a bicycle tyre, on whose back he alighted. He scared him out of his five wits by letting a fearful yelp in his ear. indeed, the story of Jack from this time becomes one of progressive moral disintegration. He took to tearing my hooks and strewing my study with fragments of newspaper. And at last, like other reprobates before him, he ran away from home. It happened very simply. As he played on the lawn one day two jackdaws passed over and called. He rose to the sound and followed them. Threo black birds disappeared in the distance. I felt a pang, for I could have better spared a better Jack. Two hours later he was homo again, moping on the roof. Not long after this I worked in my study one morning with the door and windows wide, for the day was stifling. I was busy, ami not for all Jack’s entreaties would I put aside my papers to sport with him. He gobbled my thumb, tugged at my pen. and snatched my papers. In desperation he look to flying out at the door and in at Hie window in a perpetual merry-go-round.

One half-hour nr so lie passed tolerably enough, interfering in a game of tennis that was going on out of doors, sitting on the net and pouncing on the balls as they passed. Tiring, he came hack and drowsed on my shoulder a full hour. Then he stirred and flew out, into the sunshine. I never saw him again.