Bird lore - Project Puffin

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Bird -Lore
"He loved a gun—loved to go with the old man a'huntin'. If the old man
would kill a goose, he'd act as if he was tickled to death. When it began to get
cold and there was snow on the ground, he couldn't foller huntin', for they're
a tender bird, and we'd have to shut him up. He knew just as well as we did
when some of us was gettin' ready to go huntin', and he'd get uneasy." He
got so that he would go off before it was time to shut him up. "Then," as she
said, "he'd fly up in the air and sail around till he'd find us. If there was snow
on the ground, he'd stand on a hill first on one foot and then on the other till
he got off a ways, and then he'd fly and light down by us and laugh."
In the fall he had roosted between the creek and the pond, "But," she went
on, "when it got too cold for him to do that, I'd ketch him and put him in
behind the cows. One cold night I wanted to get him in, bad—I knew it was
goin' to freeze—but he said Peep, and Keet, keet, and got away from me. In the
morning he didn't come. I went up with my heart in my mouth—I expected
to find him dead. I got up there and he was standing on one leg, the other
one froze in the ice. I thought his leg was froze, and I says, 'Dick !' and he says,
Peep, as pitiful. I broke the ice for him and took him under my arm and
hiked for home and stood him in a tub of snow-water. His leg wasn't froze
at all, but it was a long time before he wanted to go to the creek again— ^he
was a willin' barn chicken after that.
"In the spring, when the old man went down to the town, Dick went with
me to my traps—I had traps settin' for muskrat, mink, skunk, and wolves.
Dick heerd a gun, and thought it was the old man and flew after him. I called
him and he answered me Peep—but wouldn't come back. I heerd him light
and laugh, and then heered another shot and didn't hear him laugh no more.
It was about a week we didn't see nor hear nothin' of Dick—I'd give him up
for dead. Then the old man went up to the pond fishin' one day, and Dick
was there, covered with dried blood, and weak. But he wouldn't let him ketch
him, so he come home and tell me about it. Of course I went up as tight as
my legs would carry me. He wouldn't let me ketch him, but he followed me
home. He was pretty near starved, but he began to pick up, to fat up.
"In about three weeks we moved away, and they wouldn't let me take
him—thought he was too weak to foller and we'd get him in the fall. But after
we was gone the feller who shot him before killed him—and we never saw no
more of Dick."