The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1886-05-29
A FEATHERY NUISANCE.
Some Reflections on the Cheeky English
Sparrow.

this country for the purpose of turn
ing them loose on the canker-worms
which infested the trees and thence
dropped casually down the citizens
back, lived long enough to regret his
miserable ignorance. For awhile the
sparrows were both hungry and peace
able, and buckled down to housekeep-
ing and canker-worms with a zeal
which made the scientific gentleman
both glad and proud. The city built
sparrow-houses in the trees, and the
newspapers pulled and glorified the
city's feathered guests there was in
tense excitement one morning in Madi-
son Square over the report, confirmed
by several unimpeachable witnesses,
that a sparrow had actually been seen
to devour a caterpillar-at least, it was
supposed to have been caterpillar
people said how real nice it was to see
the cunning little birds hop about and
eat worms and hear them twitter, and
everybody felt that great and glori-
Gus thing had been done, and COM
plimented and congratulated the scien-
tific gentleman until he got to be so
naughty you couldn't think
At the end of four years each spar
row of the original immigrant batch had
become a great-great-grandfather, and
had lived to see his descendants all set
tied, naturalized, married, and full of
canker-worms and prosperity. Then,
do you think the old sparrows grew
feeble with advancing years, and called
their loving families about them and
twittered tender farewell and told
them to be good sparrows and fulfill
their mission, always bear in mind the
duty they owed to the whole-souled cap
italists who had brought them over the
sea? And did the infant sparrows
promise they would, and brace up and
lay the good advice of their ancestors
to heart, and after the sad funeral gath
er together and VOW that they never
would rest while a canker-wOrm was
alive? Not bit of it. The old birds
didn't die and didn't propose to die,
but grew tougher and tougher each
year, and went in more for thrashing
their children than for giving them adj
vice, and as for fulfilling their mission.
they simply made up their minds that
the canker-worm business was all stuff
and nonsense. and no sparrow his
right mind was going to spend three
hours rummaging for breakfast bugs in
the park so long as there were plenty
of refuse barrels and surface railroads
in town.
1t didn't take the sparrows long to
find out that caterpillars as an article
of steady diet were not suited to the
pampered appetites they acquired in the
new world, and SO they proceeded to
ignore the crawlers and devote them
selves to refuse with a shameful energy
which amazed the confiding public and
sent the scientific gentleman to his
grave with a broken heart.
But the birds multiplied and waxed
fat and fell into city ways, and lost
their British timidity, and got finally
to thinking they had been sent for to
run the town. The trees were full of
them, and the grass thick with them,
and they swarmed all over the city and
made tenements wherever a cornice or
molding afforded the slightest shelter
or foothOld. They Matched broods in
unfinished chimneys and nestled in
legions in the belfry of Old Trinity,
made the life of every robin and lin
net in the park burden to him, and
sent delegates to colonize every city in
the Union. The result has been that in
fifteen brief years they have acquired
clear title to the entire country from
Portland to Galveston, and between
them and the milliners the birds of
merry song and gay feather have van
ished forever.
Saucy, independent, devil-may-care
rascals are they, asking and giving no
quarter, and having but two occupa-
tions-feeding and free fight. When
a sparrow has eaten all he can hold he
has but one object in life, and that is to
wallop his neighbor or get walloped.
The result is that he is in a state of
perpetual mott, and if nature had not
thoughtfully provided him with strength
enough to grow several dozen crops of
feathers year he would be naked as
4 hazel-nut three-fourths of the time.
~ Summer is the carnival season
for sparrows-plenty of warmth,
worms, frolic and rough and tum-
BILE rows. Then is the time they
can fill themselves up in five
minutes, and while away the rest
of the day giving or getting thrash
ing. and the loss of few mouthfuls of
feathers is matter of no consequence.
But when winter comes, and the long
icicles are pendent from the caves and
sleet covers the wires, and the flying
snowflakes cover tree and sward with
their frozen Wilderness, the life of the
sparrow is not happy one. Poor lit
tie ragged beggars! they have a hard
scuffie to keep life and warmth in their
little brown bodies, with only one little
thin waistcoat of fluff between them
and the blizzard. And there are no
canker-worms there, no profusion of
seeds and bugs and fruit, but hard-pan