Then I tried going close the sweetest flowers, those oftenest visited, the petunias, yellow day lilies, and trumpet creepers, and sitting so immovably I was not noticeable while I made a study of the Lady Birds.  My first discovery was that they had no tail.  One poised near enough to make sure of that, and I hurried to my father with the startling news.  He said it was nothing remarkable; birds frequently lost their tails.  He explained how a bird in close quarters has power to relax its muscles, and let its tail go in order to save its body, when under the paw of a cat, or caught in a trap.

That was satisfactory, but I thought it must have been a spry cat to get even a paw on the Lady Bird, for frequently humming-birds could be seen perching, but never one of these.  I watched the tail question sharply, and soon learned the cats had been after every Lady Bird that visited our garden, or any of our neighbours, for not one of them had a tail.  When this information was carried my father, he became serious, but finally he said perhaps the tail was very short; those of humming-birds or wrens were, and apparently some water birds had no tail, or at least a very short one.

That seemed plausible, but still I watched this small and most interesting bird of all; this bird that no one ever had seen taking a bath, or perching, and whose nest never had been found by a person so familiar with all outdoors as my father.  Then came a second discovery:  it could curl its beak in a little coil when leaving a flower.  A few days later I saw distinctly that it had four wings but I could discover no feet.  I became a rank doubter, and when these convincing proofs were carried to my father, he also grew dubious.

“I always have thought and been taught that it was a bird,” he said, “but you see so clearly and report so accurately, you almost convince me it is some large insect possibly of the moth family.”

When I carried this opinion to my mother and told her, no doubt pompously, that `very possibly’ I had discovered that the Lady Bird was not a bird at all, she hailed it as high treason, and said, “Of course it is a bird!” That forced me to action.  The desperate course of capturing one was resolved upon.  If only I could, surely its feet, legs, and wings would tell if it were a bird.  By the hour I slipped among those bloom-bordered walks between the beds of flaming sweet-williams, buttercups, phlox, tiger and day lilies, Job’s tears, hollyhocks, petunias, poppies, mignonette, and every dear old-fashioned flower that grows, and followed around the flower-edged beds of lettuce, radishes, and small vegetables, relentlessly trailing Lady Birds.