TWINS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20509, 29 August 1936, Page 13

TWINS

THE FEARLESSNESS OF LITTLE THINGS Sunrising Hill, between Banbury and Shakespeare's Stratford, is one of the stiffest of climbs, says the Children’s Newspaper. A few days ago the writer was climbing it in his small car in lowest gear and (he is sorry to say) making a good deal of noise in doing so. Yet a dozen little rabbits playing on the grass verge paid absolutely no attention to the car or the noise. These tiny, velvety chaps were not more than a month old, yet they had learned already that cars and the people they carried were not going to do them any harm. Up in the Highlands beyond Lairg the main post road to Cape Wrath runs through a pass in the hills, and here wild red deer graze like cattle on the open moor within a stone’s throw of the road. They are almost as tame as the English rabbits. Some wild things are naturally tame. There is a robin in our garden which is literally under our feet when we are digging, and we have to be really careful not to tread on him. A thrush is not naturally so confiding as a robin, yet a thrush which built this spring in a yew tree within a foot of a path traversed by dozens of people daily, and only a few yards from a door that is being constantly opened and shut, sat on her eggs and watched the passers without the slightest sign of fear in her soft, bright eyes. A really amazing case of fearlessness on the part of a wild bird is reported in a Dutch paper. At Oss near Amsterdam a lark has built its nest actually between the metals of a railway line and sits on its eggs while dozens of trains daily thunder overhead. In nesting-time more and more wild birds draw in and build in gardens or near houses. They seem to be gaining fresh trust in humanity. Why did the fly fly? Because the spider spid’er.