WHAT STUMPED THE BLUE JAYS by MARK TWAIN
Animals talk to each
other, of course. There can be no question about that; but I suppose there are
very few people who can understand them. I never knew but one man who could. I
knew he could, however, because he told me so himself. He was a middle-aged, simple-hearted
miner who had lived in a lonely corner of California, among the woods and
mountains, a good many years, and had studied the ways of his only neighbors,
the beasts and the birds, until he believed he could accurately translate any
remark which they made. This was Jim Baker. According to Jim Baker, some
animals have only a limited education, and use only very simple words, and
scarcely ever a comparison or a flowery figure; whereas, certain other animals
have a large vocabulary, a fine command of language and a ready and fluent
delivery; consequently these latter talk a great deal; they like it; they are
conscious of their talent, and they enjoy "showing off." Baker said,
that after long and careful observation, he had come to the conclusion that the
bluejays were the best talkers he had found among birds and beasts. Said he:
There's more to a
bluejay than any other creature. He has got more moods, and more different
kinds of feelings than other creatures; and mind you, whatever a bluejay feels,
he can put into language. And no rnere commonplace language, either, but
rattling, out-and-out book talk - and bristling with metaphor, too - just
bristling! And as for command of language - why you never see a bluejay get
stuck for a word. No man ever did. They just boil out of him! And another
thing: I've noticed a good deal, and there's no bird, or cow, or anything that
uses as good grammar as a bluejay. You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a
cat does - but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur
with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you
the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that
is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use. Now
I've never heard a jay use bad grammar but very seldom; and when they do, they are
as ashamed as a human; they shut right down and leave.
You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure - because he's got
feathers on him, and don't belong to no church, perhaps; but otherwise he is
just as much a human as you be. And I'll tell you for why. A jay's gifts, and
instincts, and feelings, and interests, cover the whole ground. A jay hasn't
got any more principle than a congressman. A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a
jay will deceive, a jay will betray; and four times out of five, a jay will go
back on his solemnest promise. The sacredness of an obligation is a thing which
you can't cram into no bluejay's head. Now, on top of all this, there's another
thing; a jay can outswear any gentleman in the mines. You think a cat can
swear. Well, a cat can; but you give a bluejay a subject that calls for his
reserve powers, and where is your cat! Don't talk to me - I know too much about
this thing. And there's yet another thing; in the one little particular of scolding
- just good, clean, out-and-out scolding - a bluejay can lay over anything,
human or divine. Yes, sir, a jay is everything that a man is. A jay can cry, a
jay can laugh, a jay can feel shame, a jay can reason and plan and discuss, a
jay likes gossip and scandal, a jay has got a sense of humor, a jay knows when
he is an ass just as well as you do - maybe better. If a jay ain't human, he
better take in his sign, that's all. Now I'm going to tell you a perfectly true
fact about some bluejays. When I first begun to understand jay language
correctly, there was a little incident happened here. Seven years ago, the last
man in this region but me moved away. There stands his house - been empty ever
since; a log house, with a plank roof - just one big room, and no more; no
ceiling - nothing between the rafters and the floor. Well, one Sunday morning I
was sitting out here in front of my cabin, with my cat, taking the sun, and
looking at the blue hills, and listening to the leaves rustling so lonely in
the trees, and thinking of the home away yonder in the states, that I hadn't
heard from in thirteen years, when a bluejay lit on that house, with an acorn
in his mouth, and says, "Hello, I reckon I've struck something." When
he spoke, the acorn dropped out of his mouth and rolled down the roof, of
course, but he didn't care; his mind was all on the thing he had struck. It was
a knothole in the roof. He cocked his head to one side, shut one eye and put
the other one to the hole, like a possum looking down a jug; then he glanced up
with his bright eyes, gave a wink or two with his wings - which signifies
gratification, you understand - and says, "It looks like a hole, it's
located like a hole - blamed if I don't believe it is a hole!"
Then he cocked his head down and took another look; he glances up perfectly
joyful, this time; winks his wings and his tail both, and says, "Oh, no,
this ain't no fat thing, I reckon! If I ain't in luck!--why it's a perfectly
elegant hole!" So he flew down and got that acorn, and fetched it up and
dropped it in, and was just tilting his head back, with the heavenliest smile
on his face, when all of a sudden he was paralyzed into a listening attitude
and that smile faded gradually out of his countenance like breath off'n a razor,
and the queerest look of surprise took its place. Then he says, "Why, I
didn't hear it fall!" He cocked his eye at the hole again, and took a long
look; raised up and shook his head; stepped around to the other side of the
hole and took another look from that side; shook his head again. He studied
awhile, then he just went into the details - walked round and round the hole
and spied into it from every point of the compass. No use. Now he took a
thinking attitude on the comb of the roof and scratched the back of his head
with his right foot a minute, and finally says, "Well, it's too many for
me, that's certain; must be a mighty long hole; however, I ain't got no time to
fool around here, I got to tend to business; I reckon it's all right - chance
it, anyway."
So he flew off and fetched another acorn and dropped it in, and tried to flirt
his eye to the hole quick enough to see what become of it, but he was too late.
He held his eye there as much as a minute; then he raised up and sighed, and
says, "Confound it, I don't seem to understand this thing, no way;
however, I'll tackle her again." He fetched another acorn, and done his
level best to see what become of it, but he couldn't. He says, "Well, I
never struck no such a hole as this before; I'm of the opinion it's a totally
new kind of a hole." Then he begun to get mad. He held in for a spell,
walking up and down the comb of the roof and shaking his head and muttering to
himself; but his feelings got the upper hand of him, presently, and he broke loose
and cussed himself black in the face. I never see a bird take on so about a
little thing. When he got through he walks to the hole and looks in again for
half a minute; then he says, "Well, you're a long hole, and a deep hole,
and a mighty singular hole altogether - but I've started in to fill you, and
I'm d****d if I don't fill you, if it takes a hundred years!"
And with that, away he went. You never see a bird work so since you was born.
The way he hove acorns into that hole for about two hours and a half was one of
the most exciting and astonishing spectacles I ever struck. He never stopped to
take a look anymore - he just hove'em in and went for more. Well, at last he
could hardly flop his wings, he was so tuckered out. He comes a-drooping down,
once more, sweating like an ice pitcher, drops his acorn in and says, "Now
I guess I've got the bulge on you by this time!" So he bent down for a
look. Ifyou'll believe me, when his head come up again he was just pale with
rage. He says, "I've shoveled acorns enough in there to keep the family
thirty years, and if I can see a sign of one of'em I wish I may land in a
museum with a belly full of sawdust in two minutes!"
He just had strength enough to crawl up onto the comb and lean his back agin
the chimbly, and then he collected his impressions and begun to free his mind.
I see in a second that what I had mistook for profanity in the mines was only
just the rudiments, as you may say.
Another jay was going by, and heard him doing his devotions, and stops to
inquire what was up. The sufferer told him the whole circumstance, and says,
"Now yonder's the hole, and if you don't believe me, go and look for
yourself." So this fellow went and looked, and comes back and says,
"How many did you say you put in there?" "Not any less than two
tons," says the sufferer. The other jay went and looked again. He couldn't
seem to make it out, so he raised a yell, and three more jays come. They all
examined the hole, they all made the sufferer tell it over again, then they all
discussed it, and got off as many leather-headed opinions about it as an
average crowd of humans could have done.
They called in more jays; then more and more, till pretty soon this whole
region beared to have a blue flush about it. There must have been five thousand
of them; and such another jawing and disputing and ripping and cussing, you
never heard. Every jay in the whole lot put his eye to the hole and delivered a
more chuckle-headed opinion about the mystery than the jay that went there before
him. They examined the house all over, too. The door was standing half open,
and at last one old jay happened to go and light on it and look in. Of course,
that knocked the mystery galley-west in a second. There lay the acorns,
scattered all over the floor. He flopped his wings and raised a whoop.
"Come here ! " he says. "Come here, everybody; hang'd if this
fool hasn't been trying to fill up a house with acorns!" They all came
a-swooping down like a blue cloud, and as each fellow lit on the door and took
a glance, the whole absurdity of the contract that that first jay had tackled
hit him home and he fell over backward suffocating with laughter, and the next
jay took his place and done the same.
Well, sir, they roosted around here on the housetop and the trees for an hour,
and guffawed over that thing like human beings. It ain't any use to tell me a
bluejay hasn't got a sense of humor, because I know better. And memory, too.
They brought jays here from all over the United States to look down that hole,
every summer for three years. Other birds, too. And they could all see the
point, except an owl that come from Nova Scotia to visit the Yosemite, and he
took this thing in on his way back. He said he couldn't see anything funny in
it. But then he was a good deal disappointed about Yosemite, too.
MARK TWAIN
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