My Ninety Acres
(Page 3 of 4)
"Of course," I said. "I remember."
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Then he said, "Come with me and I'll show you something."
I followed him along the fencerow, and presently he knelt
and parted the bushes and beckoned to me. I knelt beside
him and he pointed. "Look!" he said, and his voice grew
suddenly warm. "Look at the little devils."
I looked and could see nothing at all but dried, brown
leaves with a few delicate fern fronds thrusting through
them. Old Walter chuckled and said, "Can't see 'em, can
you? Look, over there, just by that hole in the stump." I
looked, and then slowly I saw what he was pointing at. They
sat in a little circle in a tiny nest, none of them much
bigger than the end of one of old Walter's big
thumbs—seven tiny quail. They sat very still not
moving a feather, lost among the dry, brown leaves. I might
not have seen them at all but for the brightness of their
little eyes.
"Smart!" he said, with the same note of tenderness in his
voice. "They know! They don't move!"
Then a cry of "Bob White!' came from the thick, fragrant
clover behind us and Walter said, "The old man's somewhere
around." The whistle was repeated, again and then again.
Old Walter stood up and said, "They used to laugh at me for
letting the bushes grow up in my fencerows, but they don't
any more. When the chinch bugs come along all ready to eat
up my corn, these little fellows will take care of 'em." He
chuckles, "There's nothing a quail likes as much as a
chinch bug.
"Last year Henry Talbot, down the road, lost 10 acres of
corn all taken by the bugs. Henry's a nut for clear
fencerows. He doesn't leave enough cover along 'em for a
grasshopper. He thinks that's good farming, the old fool!"
And the old man chuckled again.
We were walking now up the slope from the creek toward the
house, and he went on talking, "That fencerow beside you,"
he said, "is just full of birds—quail and song
sparrows and thrushes—the farmer's best protection.
It was Nellie that had that idea about lettin' fencerows
grow up. I didn't believe her at first. I was just as dumb
as most other farmers. But I always found out Nellie was
pretty right about farmin'. She was hardly ever wrong ... I
guess never."
