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Do look at this creature, I said to the Master, he seems to be very hard at work at his devotions. Mantas religiosa, said the Master, I know the praying rogue. Mighty devout and mighty cruel; crushes everything he can master, or impales it on his spiny shanks and feeds upon it, like a gluttonous wretch as he is. I have seen the Mantis religiosa on a larger scale than this, now and then.
And now the noisy blue-jay is calling "Thief thief thief!" in the distance, and a pair of great pileated woodpeckers with crimson crests are laughing loudly in the swamp over some family joke. But listen! what is that harsh creaking note? It is the cry of the Northern shrike, of whom tradition says that he catches little birds and impales them on sharp thorns.
All the attributes of sovereignty vested in Congress by the Constitution it impales upon the point of an alleged implication. And this is Mr. Clay's peace-offering, to appease the lust of power and the ravenings of state encroachment! A "compromise," forsooth! that sinks the general government on its own territory into a mere colony, with Virginia and Maryland for its "mother country!"
All the attributes of sovereignty vested in Congress by the Constitution it impales upon the point of an alleged implication. And this is Mr. Clay's peace-offering, to appease the lust of power and the ravenings of state encroachment! A "compromise," forsooth! that sinks the general Government on its own territory into a mere colony, with Virginia and Maryland for its "mother country!"
All this, of course, does not prove that the shrike never impales his prey, but it does prove that he does not spend all his time at the work; and while I have no doubt he has the habit, I believe the accounts of it are very much exaggerated.
She makes no remark, but stepping towards the yucca and reaching up, impales the piece of paper on one of its topmost spikes. "Now, caballero," she says, "you mount my mare. See, she stands ready for you." Hamersley again protests, saying he can walk well enough. But his tottering steps contradict him, and he urges his objections in vain.
The women seldomer do either; like women everywhere, they are less given both to sensual desire and to generous open-handedness.... That's a curious thing, how seldom you find physical cruelty in a woman of any nationality. Even the most spiteful and morally unkindest little girl will shudder away while her brother tears the wings off a fly or the legs off a frog, or impales a worm on a hook.
Seated on the branch of some overhanging tree, while his keen eye scans the depths below, he watches for a large fish, and as it passes, he lets fly his arrow with unerring aim, and impales the luckless victim. Some tribes fish at night, by torchlight, spearing the fish who are attracted by the light. In Nepaul the bark of the Hill Sirres is often used to poison a stream or piece of water.
Its only characteristic feature is its beak, the upper mandible having two sharp processes and a sharp hooked point. It cannot fly away to any distance with the bird it kills, nor hold it in its claws to feed upon it. It usually impales its victim upon a thorn, or thrusts it in the fork of a limb.
He sits on the fence and watches the stacks of rice, and darts upon them, also destroying grasshoppers and crickets." So said Wilson, but subsequent writers have said terrible things about him: that he catches small birds and impales them on thorns; that he delights in killing more than he can eat. Could these things be true? Where, then, was the larder of this family?
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