Busy with other
things, I did not stop to reflect that it was impossible there should be
sheep in that quarter, and the occurrence had quite passed out of my
mind when, one day, a cracker, talking about frogs, happened to say,
"Yes, and we have one kind that makes a noise exactly like the bleating
of sheep." That, without question, was what I had heard in the
flat-woods. But this frog in the sugar-cane swamp was the same fellow
that on summer evenings, ever and ever so many years ago, in sonorous
bass that could be heard a quarter of a mile away, used to call from
Reuben Loud's pond, "Pull him in! Pull him in!" or sometimes (the
inconsistent amphibian), "Jug o' rum! Jug o' rum!"
I dismounted from my perch at last, and was sauntering idly along the
path (idleness like this is often the best of ornithological industry),
when suddenly I had a vision! Before me, in the leafy top of an oak
sapling, sat a blue grosbeak. I knew him on the instant. But I could see
only his head and neck, the rest of his body being hidden by the leaves.
It was a moment of feverish excitement. Here was a new bird, a bird
about which I had felt fifteen years of curiosity; and, more than that,
a bird which here and now was quite unexpected, since it was not
included in either of the two Florida lists that I had brought with me
from home. For perhaps five seconds I had my opera-glass on the blue
head and the thick-set, dark bill, with its lighter-colored under
mandible.
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