Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 September 1908 — NOVELTIES IN NEWS [ARTICLE]

NOVELTIES IN NEWS

Blackbirds Haven New Way of Slaking Their Thirst, and Tomatoes Suffer. SOME SIGNS OF A BAD WINTER Boy's Dreain Finds a Ring Tree Working Overtime—Capture of a Rattlesnake. Muncie, Ind.. Sept. 11.—Blackbirds, officers of the four canning companies of Delaware county say, are responsible largely for the falling off in the tomato crop in this county. Incidentally the drought Is responsible. The blackbirds, according to the farmers ■who grow tomatoes for the canneries, have become so thirsty during the many weeks in which rain has failed to fall that they' have alighted by the thousands on tie tomato fields ami have quenched their thirst by thrusting their beaks into the juicy pulp. Thousands of dollars’ loss from this cause alone will be the result. Never before has this condition arisen, so the can ning companies say. Farmers say that scarecrows are of no avail to keep the blackbirds out of the tomato fields. Predicting a Cold Winter. Morocco, Ind., Sept. 11. —Old hunters and local weather prophets assert that we are to have an early and an unusually severe winter. They say that the present early appearance of wild ducks in the Kankakee marshes is a neverfalling sign of early and protracted cold weather. Other signs of cold weather are not wanting, they claim, such as unusually heavy husks on corn, big stores of food laid up by squirrels and the exceptionally large amount of honey gathered by bees. Apple Tree Works Overtime. Milan. Ind., Sept. 11. —A large apple tree in the orchard of John Sammons, near Napoleon, is putting forth full bloom, while its branches are weighted down with a good crop of apples. Dream Finds a Ring. Bedford, Ind., Sept 11. —Mrs. Frank Brldnell recently lost a gold ring valued very highly on account of it being a keepsake of a dead relative, and all efforts to find it failed, although It was positively known to have been lost in the yard. John Trueblood, the sevenyear old son of E. E. Trueblood, a neighbor, while visiting in Campbellsburg, south of here, with his mother, dreamed of seeing the ring in the grass in the Bridnell yard, and on going to the place dreamed of the ring was found. _