Palisadian., 1920-04-17
OSTRICH AT HOME
Bad Fellow to Tackle in Fight, Is
the Great Bird.
SkuIking Hyena Found This Out to Its
SorroW-Few Creatures Of ths
Wild Care to Mix Things
With "PIumes."

1t was that precise hour when the
distant landscape shimmered with
heat, when the restless mirage hung
on the horizon like visible dreams, and
when the only things alive out on the
plains were the dancing "dust devils"
and they were inanimate-and in
the sky the specks floating which
would have turned into vultures If
anything had died.
All the antelopes and the zebras
were motionless portions Of the shade
under the candelabralike cuphorbia
trees and all the birds were still.
The silence was the silence Of heat
-parched, sizzling, frying heat, which
only the big lizards defied in the open,
or among the rocks that were blister
ing to the touch.
Then came the voice, resonant, h0l-
low, booming, powerful, extraordinary,
like some distant war drum beating,
or the bass thunder of lion, If lion
ever challenged at midday. But
neithter lion nor natives ever wore
that conspicuous black and white liv-
| cry, or stalked along at that tre-
mendous pace as he came alone and
afar across the plains, booming as he
came. It was Plumes, the cock os-
trich, says writer in London An
swers.
Plumes must have been somewhere
out Of sight afar in hollow, feeding
upon-oh! pebbles, for all I know;
there seemed nothing else. But the
animal does not live that can escape
Plumes' super high-power prismatic
binocular eyes, which was why Plumes
came back now.
When 500 yards away, the giant
bird left off booming; set all sail, so
to speak, which in his case meant
opening stumpy wings adorned with
beautiful plumes sufficient to stock
shop, and-let himself go.
Till that moment he had merely
walked as fast as most beasts run, a
supercilious Gibson walk. Now he
ran, and the dust smoked out behind
him like the exhaust behind motor
car Anyone who thought he could
run faster, or half as fast, for the mat
ter Of that, was at full liberty to do
so.
The striped hyena did not think he
could, but he knew he had to try; and
he started up-invisible till then be-
hind a cactus husband raced for his
skulking life.
Just short of the mimosa scrub,
Plumes caught him up. The hyena
recoiled upon his own tail, swapping
| fiercely to fight the last fight. But
| wild-eyed, five feet high at the back,
lowered over him like Azrael, and
he died.
One kick was enough from that ter
! ribly armed, twin-clawed foot-just
one blasting down-stroke beating as
| the sledge-hammer strikes.
Then Plumes stalked away, con-
sciously aware, of course of his much
smaller wife, herself quite invisible,
lying fiat on her eight huge eggs bang
in the open, where the hyena had been
| stalking her. Aware, too, now, Of
| something that had been a hyena be-
fore the kick landed. but now was one
uO iouSSI'
Night came swiftly, as it does in
these parts, racing over the mysterious
plains, and Plumes, feeding far away
on the horizon, put up his fiat head
| and began to stalk westward in the
dark. The lions and the thunder were
clamoring together among the hills,
| but this time Plumes did not answer.
He had other work to do.
Slowly the hen ostrich got up,
stretched and faded away to feed.
Slowly Plumes let himself down on
the eggs to remain there for the night.
His black plumage made him prac-
tically invisible in the dark, and If
there were any who should scent the
nest, and aim at its destruction, the
great male bird was quite capable Of
tackling them single-legged, save only
if they be not lions wild dog pack,
| or one very big leopard.