“Looks as if there may be something in this
idea of a long, hard, cold winter,” thought
Blacky, “but perhaps the Quacks are only guessing,
too. I wouldn’t take their word for it
any more than I would the word of Johnny Chuck or
Jerry Muskrat or Paddy the Beaver. I’ll
look about a little.”
So after warning the Quacks to remain in the pond
of Paddy the Beaver if they would be safe, Blacky
bade them good-by and flew away. He headed straight
for the Green Meadows and Farmer Brown’s cornfield.
A little of that yellow corn would make a good breakfast.
When he reached the cornfield, Blacky perched on top
of a shock of corn, for it already had been cut and
put in shocks in readiness to be carted up to Farmer
Brown’s barn. For a few minutes he sat
there silent and motionless, but all the time his
sharp eyes were making sure that no enemy was hiding
behind one of those brown shocks. When he was
quite certain that things were as safe as they seemed,
he picked out a plump ear of corn and began to tear
open the husks, so as to get at the yellow grains.
“Seems to me these husks are unusually thick,”
muttered Blacky, as he tore at them with his stout
bill. “Don’t remember ever having
seen them as thick as these. Wonder if it just
happens to be so on this ear.”
Then, as a sudden thought popped into his black head,
he left that ear and went to another. The husks
of this were as thick as those on the first.
He flew to another shock and found the husks there
just the same. He tried a third shock with the
same result.
“Huh, they are all alike,” said he.
Then he looked thoughtful and for a few minutes sat
perfectly still like a black statue. “They
are right,” said he at last. “Yes,
Sir, they are right.” Of course he meant
Johnny Chuck and Jerry Muskrat and Paddy the Beaver
and the Quacks. “I don’t know how
they know it, but they are right; we are going to
have a long, hard, cold winter. I know it myself
now. I’ve found a sign. Old Mother
Nature has wrapped this corn in extra thick husks,
and of course she has done it to protect it.
She doesn’t do things without a reason.
We are going to have a cold winter, or my name isn’t
Blacky the Crow.”
A single fact may fail to prove
you either right or wrong;
Confirm it with another and your
proof will then be strong.
— Blacky the Crow.
After his discovery that Old Mother Nature had wrapped
all the ears of corn in extra thick husks, Blacky
had no doubt in his own mind that Johnny Chuck and
Jerry Muskrat and Paddy the Beaver and the Quacks
were quite right in feeling that the coming winter
would be long, hard and cold. But Blacky long
ago learned that it isn’t wise or wholly safe
to depend altogether on one thing.
“Old Mother Nature never does things by halves,”
thought Blacky, as he sat on the fence post on the
Green Meadows, thinking over his discovery of the
thick husks on the corn. “She wouldn’t
take care to protect the corn that way and not do
as much for other things. There must be other
signs, if I am smart enough to find them.”
