The Pulaskian., 1920-11-11
LIVES WITH BIRDS
Caretaker Has Absolutely No
 Other Companions
Job About as Lonesome as One Could Imagine Is Eagerly Sought by
 Hundreds of Men.

Hundreds of Men. WANTED-A man to live alone on an
 Island tinland lakel eight miles from l shofe transportation, food, clothing. sbeI- ter, boat. etc, furnished. no work. no compensation Summertime. 600 Tribune Building. New York
 Every Easter Sunday for the last fifteen years this advertisement has appeared in Help Wanted" columns. Every year hundreds of men. and oe- easlonaIly a woman. have made appli- cation for the job.
 Many of those who have answered and received no reply have formed the opinion that the whole thing is a prac- teal joke, played by an individual Who is collecting data of the different Kinds of people who react to the same lmpulse-or something like that. h. Vestigation, however, has proved that there is in truth a man who offers l precisely the sort of position de- scrlbed and that it has been filled sat isfactorily each summer for 15 years.
 The man Is the director of large weIl-known dry goods house in New York. He has a home in the Adiron- daeks near lake with four little is- lands in tha center. Every year a col ony of arctic or burgomaster seagulls alights on these islands and stays there throughout the summer. Tn or der to protect the eggs and the young, a man is hired to live on one of the islands.
 lie has mo duty other than the pa trolling of the shore and the bird haunts. He goes early in May when the birds begin to arrive and leaves after they do. In no case is it neces- sary for him to stay longer than Oc- tober l.
 There is a humorous angle to the situation, an angle that gives truth to the trite saying that distance lends enehantment When the advisability of getting man to look after these birds first formulated itself in the mind of the man who has made him. self their friend, he decided he could hire one of the men in the neighbor- ing community for the task
 lie broached the subject to some of them and offered to pay $50 a month with food and shelter as described in the advertisement Thirty dollars month at that time meant a good deal more than it does today. Neverthe- less, he could find nobody to whom the idea of living a solitary life on a lake island made any appeal.
 Knowing human nature intimately he employs hundreds of men and wom- en-he decided to insert an advertise ment in city papers, tell briefly what was expected and make no offer of compensation other than food, cloth ing, and shelter. The response was stupendous Immediately letters be- gan pouring in by the score from men in every walk of life asking that they be allowed to go off into the solitudes.
 The Bowery bum applied and said that he wanted nothing but the woods and the waters the youth whose love had been unrequited made a similar request: the man whose aim was to arrive at the topmost rung of the lad der of literary success was certain that the advertisement had been inserted as a godsend from heaven.
 Out of the hundreds that applied, one was finally chosen. Among the fifteen who have worked there are well-known naturalist Gn attorney gen. erai of a neighboring state, and man named Daniel Boone, who is direct descendant of the pioneer who bore that name.
 In almost every case the men asked to be allowed to return the following year, but the rules laid down by the man who has interested himself in this work are against this. He does not want the keeper of the birds to grow acquainted with the people in the neighbering community, as he might if he returned to the same place year after year.
 IL is pot the men that interest him; it is the preservation of this species of seagnlls, which are, he states. the largest of their kind having a spread of wings of five feet Their contrt- button to humanity is. the seavenger duty they perform. It is estimated that they eat two pounds of offal q day.