Page:The Way of the Wild (1923).pdf/162

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along just in time to pick him up. I took him home and put him in an old chicken coop after nailing wire netting over the front of it so he could not get out.

He was very wild and shy. We kept him for nearly a month, but I do not think he would ever have been tamed. He would finally eat his corn or oats when no one was looking. When we came to see him he would go in the farthest corner of his coop and crouch down as though scared to death. My father said we could not tame him and we finally decided to let him go. The whole family came out to see him off. After some difficulty I caught him and took him struggling to the back yard. Here I set him down on the snow. For a few seconds he crouched as though uncertain. Then he ran a few steps to get a good start and with a roar of wings he was off. The last I saw of him he was sailing away toward the spruce woods and the old drumming log.

I do not know what became of him. If he escaped the owls, the hawks, the wildcat and the hunters, perhaps he reared his own brood of