Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 278, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1920 — LIVES WITH BIRDS [ARTICLE]

LIVES WITH BIRDS

Caretaker Has Absolutely No Other Companions. Job About a* Lonesome as Ono Could Imagine Io Eagerly Sought by Hundred* of WANTED—A man to live atone on aa island (inland lake) eisht miles from shore; transportation, food, clothing, shelter, boat, etc., furnished; no work; no compensation. Summertime, <OO Tribune Building, New York. * Every Easter Sunday for the last fifteen years this advertisement has appeared in "Help Wanted” column*. Every year hundreds of men, and occasionally a woman, have made application for the job. Many of those who have answered and received no reply have formed the opinion that the whole thing Is a practical joke, played by an Individual who is collecting data of the different kinds of people, who react to the same impulse—or something like that. Investigation, however, has proved that there is in truth a man who offers precisely the sort of position described and that it yas been filled satisfactorily each summer for 15 years. The man is the director of a large well-known dry goods house in New York. He has a home in the Adirondacks near a lake with four little islands in the center. Every year a colony of arctic or burgomaster seagulls alights on these islands and stays there throughout the summer. In order to protect the eggs and the young, a man Is hired to live on one of the islands.

He has no duty other than the patrolling of the shore and the bird haunts. He goes early in May when the birds begin to arrive and leaves after they .do. <n no case Is it necessary for him to stay longer than October 1. There is a humorous angle to the situation, an angle that gives truth to the trite saying that distance lends enchantment When the advisability of getting a man to look after these birds first formulated Itself in the mind of the man who has made himself their friend, he decided he could hire one of the men in the neighboring community for the task. He broached the subject to some of them and offered to pay S3O a month with food and shelter as described in the advertisement. Thirty dollars a month at that time meant a good deal more than it does today. Nevertheless, he could find nobody to whom the Idea of living a solitary life on a lake island made any appeal. Knowing human nature Intimately—he employs hundreds of men and women —he decided to insert an advertisement in city papers, tell briefly, what was expected and make no offer of compensation other than food, clothing, and shelter. The response was stupendous. Immediately letters began pouring in by the score from men In every walk of life asking that they be allowed to go off into the solitudes. The Bowery bum applied and said that he wanted nothing but the woods and the waters; the youth whose love had been unrequited made a similar request; the man whose alm was to arrive at the topmost rung of the ladder of literary success was certain that the advertisement had been inserted as a godsend from heaven. Out of the hundreds that applied, one was finally chosen. Among the fifteen who have worked there are a well-known naturalist, cn attorney general of a neighboring state, and a man named Daniel Boone, who Is a direct descendant of the pioneer who, bore that name. Tn almost every case the men asked to be allowed to return the following year, but the rules laid down by the man who has interested himself in this work are against this. He does not want the keeper of the birds to grow acquainted with the people in the neighboring community, as he might if he returned to the same place year after year. It Is not the men that interest him; It Is the preservation of this species of seagulls, whlsh are, he states, the largest of their kind, having a spread at wings of . five feet. Their contribution to humanity is the scavenger duty they perform. It is estimated that they eat two pounds at offal a day.