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As I pursued them they ran squawking with outstretched stubby wings, scattering right and left, and seeking a hiding-place under the logs and débris. I captured one and carried it into camp. It was just what Joe wanted; it would make a valuable decoy. So he kept it in a box, fed it upon oats, and took it out of the woods with him.
"Confound thee, thou marplot, thou busy-body of the wood," muttered the Goodman to himself as he listened. "Wert thou but a human gossip, I 'd set thee in the stocks till thou hadst learned to hold thine evil tongue!" But the blue jay only kept up his squawking, passing the news on to his brethren until the forest rang with word of their approach.
When away from home, the birds are as other wild-ducks and fail to recognize any members of the Gray family. While at home they follow the boys around the barn-yard, squawking for feed like so many tame ducks. This is the greatest sight I have ever witnessed, and one that I could not believe existed until I had seen it.
"Doan do that." "Well, ain't we saved 'em from the Huns?" "But, hell." "War ain't no picnic, that's all," said Judkins. In the next door they found chickens roosting in a small room with straw on the floor. The chickens ruffled their feathers and made a muffled squeaking as they slept. Suddenly there was a loud squawking and all the chickens were cackling with terror.
"You will be glad to know," he went on unctuously, "that I was entirely successful in carrying out that idea of yours as to the injunction. My dear Miss Turner," he went on with florid compliment, "Portia was a squawking baby, compared with you." "Thank you again," Mary answered, as she took the legal paper which he held outstretched toward her.
The idea had scarcely seized upon him when a fluttering of wings was heard, and on the old camp-ground alighted a flock of white wild-geese. They balanced their large deacon and elder-like bodies upon the empty seats, and there set up as grave a squawking as if they were singing a hymn, with that indifferent knowledge of harmony possessed by camp-meeting choristers.
Here a cutlas-beaked bird, spotlighted for an instant, froze into surprised immobility with the pasty, bloated worm it had seized twisting and dangling from its mouth, to flap squawking away as the ray glided on: there the coils of a seekan, in ambush on a tree limb, glittered crimson for the sudden moment of illumination; or a nameless huge-eyed pantherlike creature was glimpsed as it clawed at a nest of unfledged haris, while the frantic, screaming mother beat at it with wings and claws....
Squawking and chattering like parrot and monkey, they spurred forward, whirled back, gathered lassos, cursed frantically as Sam fell, sped off into the fog, spurred back again, and now reined their ponies to their haunches, while Kincaid halted Maxime with Gibbs's revolver, and Greenleaf sprang to the bits of his own and Hilary's terrified horses.
Most of them were mallards, and from many places in the marsh they could hear the quacking and squawking of yet other ducks hidden in the high grass. "We haven't any waders," said Alex, "and I think you'll find the water pretty cold, but you'll soon get used it to. Come ahead, then."
My destiny slumbered during the day, but at eight o'clock I heard a terrific squawking in the direction of the duck-ponds, and, aimlessly drifting in that direction, I came upon Phoebe trying to induce ducks and drakes, geese and ganders, to retire for the night.
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