Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 244, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 October 1920 — King Solomon in Feathers [ARTICLE]

King Solomon in Feathers

The literary history of the raven begins with Noah and Elijah. Naturalists call him “the most wary, the most amusing, the cleverest of birds." He has also been described as grave, dignified and sedate and many instances have been given of the peculiarities of this historical bird. The bill of. the raven is a formidable weapon—strong, stout. Sharp at the edges, curved toward the tip. It is his one weapon of offense, but it answers the purpose of two or three. Like the dirk of the oldtime plainsman, it is equally available as a dagger or as a carving knife. It can also be used as a pair of pincers. It cah kill a rat at one blow. The raven can drive its beak right through the spines of a hedgehog. It is said that the raven will never at. tack a.man. If this be true, it is, it is thought, not so much from any defect of courage as from the bird’s keen intellectual perception of whai will pay and what will not. Like most of his tribe, the raven Is, In the strictest sense of the word, omnivorous. His dietary ranges from “a worm to a whale.”

When his nest is built, as it generally is, beneath some overhanging rock which quite conceals it from view from, above, its position may sometimes be discovered by the remains of rabbit neatly laid in the short grass at the top of the cliff in what might be called his “larder." But a larder Implies an amount of economy and self-restraint that it is not in the raven to practice. In districts where food is scarce the ravens will attack without scruple a newly born lamb or even a sheep that has