My efforts to study the wonders of Nature were leaving me thoroughly frustrated. Evidently my technique was wrong. Instead of sleuthing around and prying into the home life of animals in the field, the thing to do, perhaps, was to collect them and observe them in captivity. That was how Fabre had worked, and look what he got. So I now went about the world with nets, bottles and pasteboard boxes dangling from me. I bought a turtle in the market and brought it home. I rescued a large, black, slimy snail from some little boys, and deposited it in the fern box outside my window, nailing mosquito netting all over so it could not get out.
The turtle, green and brown, had thrashed his legs in the market with every sign of being delighted to be bought for a peso. But he took one look at me and retired into his shell. I never saw his face again. I made him a little box with low sides, lined it with fresh grass, put in drinking water and crisp lettuce leaves, and scrubbed off his back with a toothbrush.
The next morning water and lettuce were untouched and he was gone. I followed the slimy track of the snail across the window box to where it stopped abruptly at the woodwork wall. Plenty of slime but no snail. He must have melted himself and run through the crack. I now visited a toad I had captured the night before, and had shut securely in a shoebox punctured with holes. I was fully expecting him not to be there. He was not. I now gave up and sulked. The only conclusion was that animals simply did not like me. I went to the library and got out Maeterlinck on bees, and Fabre on the emperor moth, and stretched myself out on the lawn in a steamer chair. I found out more about insects in ten minutes than in three months of watching them. A friend joined me, and we began to chatter about this and that.
It was some moments before I became aware of a startling phenomenon going on around me. Down a tree-trunk not five feet away, the black lizard was descending, headfirst. On a branch above, a bird with a speckled breast had begun to sing, in plain sight. Off to the left my lost turtle was slowly crawling toward the swimming pool, and, believe it or not, a grasshopper from nowhere gave a terrific whirr and landed on my shoulder.
I had found out at last how to observe Nature. It dawned on me that animals have eyes as well as I, and that they do not like opera glasses, butterfly nets and shoe-boxes. What they like is for you to pay no attention to them and make plenty of noise. The next time I plant seeds in the earth I am going to take along a volume of Edna Millay and read aloud to them.
About this Author
David is the author of many articles including Best Friend Quotes and also the author of Best life quotes
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