The Tale of Jasper Jay | Page 6

we all want to see you do it."
It was very uncomfortable for Jasper Jay. He had mistaken the sound of
the dinner-horn for the call of a strange bird. And he felt uncommonly

foolish.
Since he dared not attack Mr. Crow, especially when his ten relations
were with him, there was nothing Jasper could do except give a loud,
helpless scream of rage and hurry away toward the woods.
"See those crows chasing that blue jay!" Farmer Green said to Johnnie,
as they walked toward home. "Probably he's played some trick on
them."
But for once it was not Jasper who was guilty. It was old Mr. Crow
himself who had played the trick. He had known from the first that Mrs.
Green had bought a new dinner-horn, because the men were always late
for dinner. Though how he discovered that fact is a mystery.
Somehow, old Mr. Crow knew about everything that happened in
Pleasant Valley. And now Jasper Jay had learned something more, too.

VII
SCARING THE HENS
THERE was one sport of which Jasper Jay was over-fond. He loved to
imitate the calls of other birds; and Jasper was such a good mimic that
he often deceived his neighbors by his tricks.
It was not pleasant for a sober, elderly bird-gentleman to come home at
night from a hard day's work and have his wife accuse him of idling
away his time.
"You can't deny it--for I could hear you laughing in the woods!" she
might say.
And it was not always an easy task to convince her that what she had
heard was nobody but that noisy rascal, Jasper Jay, playing a trick on
her.

Nor did Jasper limit his droll teasing to his own neighbors. Sometimes
he hid in a tree near the farm buildings and frightened the hens by
making a sound exactly like a certain red-shouldered hawk, who lived
in the low woods along Black Creek, where frogs were plentiful. A
fierce scream of "Kee-you! kee-you!" was quite enough to alarm an old
hen with a big family of young chickens. Though she might know well
enough that the red-shouldered hawk seldom made a meal of poultry,
preferring frogs and field-mice above all other food, it was only natural
that she shouldn't care to take any chances. The haste with which a
nervous mother-hen called her family into the chicken house when she
heard that cry of "Kee-you! kee-you!" always amused Jasper Jay, for he
never tired of the game.
Surprising as it may seem, now and then Jasper's hawk-call deceived
even Farmer Green himself. And sometimes he would step into the
kitchen and take his old gun off the hooks on the wall above the wide
fireplace and hurry outside again in the hope of getting a shot at Mr.
Hawk. It happened at last that in some way Mr. Red-shouldered Hawk
heard of this trick of Jasper's. And that old gossip, Mr. Crow, warned
Jasper Jay that he had better be careful.
"Mr. Hawk says that you are giving him a bad name with Farmer
Green," Mr. Crow told Jasper one day. "Farmer Green calls him 'that
old hen-hawk,' and, of course, it's not very pleasant for Mr. Hawk to
have somebody looking for him with a gun. I know what the feeling is
like, myself," said old Mr. Crow. "Believe me, it's enough to make one
most uncomfortable!"
But Jasper Jay only shrieked with laughter.
"You'll sing a different song if Mr. Hawk catches you," Mr. Crow
snapped.
And that made Jasper Jay scream all the louder. Then he stopped
laughing and said "Caw! caw!" in a husky voice so like Mr. Crow's
own that the old gentleman spluttered and fumed and all but chased
Jasper out of the woods where they were sitting at the time.

They never did get along well together--old Mr. Crow and Jasper Jay.
They were cousins, you know. But that fact did not help matters at all.
Perhaps they knew too much about each other.
"Don't worry about me!" said Jasper Jay at last.
"Very well!" Mr. Crow replied stiffly. "But remember--I've warned
you!" he croaked. And then he flew away to his nest in a tall elm,
overlooking the cornfield.

VIII
A BIT OF MISCHIEF
JASPER JAY did not heed Mr. Crow's warning. When he learned that
Mr. Red-shouldered Hawk was angry with him because he had imitated
Mr. Hawk's fierce cry, "Kee-you! kee-you!" Jasper was more pleased
with himself than ever. Scaring Farmer Green's hens with that piercing
scream had been a good deal of fun. But making Mr. Hawk angry was
still more.
So Jasper Jay began to visit the farmyard even oftener than before. If
the mother-hens, with their chicks, did not happen to be scratching in
the barnyard, there