The Little River news., 1920-05-08
OSTRICH AT HOME
Bad Fellow to Tackle in Fight, Is
 the Great Bird.
Skulking Hyena Found This Out to It's SorroW-Few Creatures of the Wild Care to Mix Things
 With "Pjumes,"

It was that precise hour when the distant landscape shimmered with neat, 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
 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, hOl- low, booming, powerful, extraordinary, like some distant war drum beating, or the bass thunder of a 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 Fumes, the cock os- trfch, says 6 writer in London An swers.
 Fumes must have been somewhere out of sight afar in a hollow, feeding upon-oh! pebbles. for all know i; there seemed nothing else. But the Fumes super high-power prismatic binocular eyes, which was why Fumes came back now.
 When 800 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 q 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 a 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 bush-and raced for his skulking life.
 Just short of the mimosa scrub, Fumes caught him up.' The hyena recoiled upon his own tail, snapping flercely to fight the last fight. But Fumes. head back, wings spread, 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 Fumes 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 te- fore the kick landed. but now was one no longer.
 Night came swiftly, as 1t does in these parts, racing over the mysterious plains, and Fumes, 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 Fumes 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.