DEDICATION
To Mildred and Tommy Kienzle, who provided the loving environment and understanding care which resulted in the development of a unique personality—Robert—and who generously permitted me to write this book
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
Chapter1THE MIRACLE
Chapter2REGISTRATION
Chapter3A CHANGE OF SEASON
Chapter4CHRISTMAS AND GRANDCHILDREN
Chapter5IN THE SPRING—A SURPRISE
Chapter6A BIG PROBLEM
Chapter7FAIT ACCOMPLI
Chapter8I LEARN
Chapter9CALLERS
Chapter10JUST THE TWO OF US
Chapter11NBC TELEVISION
Chapter12HE LOVES ME
Chapter13ROBERT ASSERTS HERSELF
Chapter14AN ANXIOUS WEEK
Chapter15THE LAST CHAPTER
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
1
THE MIRACLE
UNTIL JULY 11, 1962, we had no hint of the change about to take place in our lives. On that date there was no Robert; there was just an abandoned egg in a deserted wet nest. We had known that there was a quail nesting in the deep grass beyond the rose garden. My friend and neighbor, Dr. Thomas Kienzle, had discovered the nest in June, and he had carefully left the surrounding grass unmowed.
By dint of patience and long periods of standing motionless, he had seen the little hen go to the nest and had watched her as she reached out with her bill and carefully covered herself with the grasses around her, from one side, from the other side, from front and from back, until she was completely hidden. She had chosen her spot well. Tommy and Mildred had built their house at Orleans, on Cape Cod, high on a bank above a lake, and since it was surrounded by extensive woods, it was a haven for man and bird. As he cleared lawns and paths, Tommy had purposely left piles of brush in among the trees, because quail had often been seen around the place. Of course he had no idea as to when the eggs would hatch, but both he and his wife were on the alert for them.
When their two boys were in their teens, Dr. and Mrs. Kienzle had spent several summers on Cape Cod, and the decision to make this their retirement home had been unanimous. Few men have had a better right to look forward to retirement. For thirty years he had been a member of the medical department of Standard Oil Company, New Jersey; during much of this time he had been responsible for the medical welfare of the thousands of men on their huge fleet of tankers. Previously he had been Assistant Surgeon in the United States Public Health Service. He can tell fascinating stories of his work in Mississippi, on flood control under President Hoover.
Since both the doctor and his wife grew up in Kentucky where they early acquired a deep-rooted love of wildlife, it is not strange that when the time came to locate on Cape Cod, they resisted the efforts of the real estate agent to interest them in seashore property, and chose instead four wooded acres on the high bank of what was originally Fresh Pond, but later known as Crystal Lake. The land was wild and rough, and much of it has been left that way, making it a haven for birds and animals of all kinds, including deer.
In a spacious clearing they built their attractive home, with floor-to-ceiling glass toward the wide patio overlooking the lake. The lawn extends from patio to steps going down the seventy feet to the shore and dock. Wild ducks, geese, herons and gulls are in abundance and the many bird feeders bring field glasses and bird books into frequent use. Into this lovely setting they moved, bringing with them Old Faithful, a goldfish whose actual age is unknown, but who has been with them sixteen years. It is a welcoming home, and I was delighted to have them here, and although I had never been a bird watcher, I soon found myself sharing their enthusiasm.
On that eventful July morning, Tommy went to get the car for a trip to Lexington. As he neared the garage, which is some distance from the house, he was aware of movement in the grass, and his attention was immediately drawn to a female quail apparently in distress. She was in the middle of the driveway, dragging one wing as though it were broken, and seeming to struggle. Tommy stood very still and then saw the male bird, going through the same performance. He realized immediately that he was witnessing one of the most remarkable acts of parental bravery known to the world. The parents were definitely drawing his attention to themselves, away from their young. As he stood quietly he saw two or three tiny balls of fluff moving off the driveway to safety, evidently obeying some kind of direction from the mother. Tommy moved softly back toward the house, and was rewarded by seeing twelve young quail led into the woods. In a few minutes he got the car, picked up Mildred and recounted what he had just been privileged to see. As they drove out of the yard he said:
“Look! There they are! The mother quail and—two, four, eight—there are twelve of them, just going past the rose bush toward the pine trees.”
He and his wife sat quietly in the car as the mother quail led the little balls of brown fluff off to safety. Their coloring was so protective that it was hard to follow them even a short distance.
“I’ve read that the quail hen never returns to the place where the chicks were hatched, so when we come home we will have a look at the nest,” said Mildred as they drove on down the driveway. But before they returned, there was a thunderstorm, and they did not visit the nest until the next morning. Even though they knew almost exactly where it was, it was cleverly hidden and not easy to find. They stood looking at it—just a little cup-shaped depression in among the grass.
“Wait a minute,” said Tommy. “I think there is something in it.” Sure enough, down in the mud were two eggs, one badly cracked and one perfect. He picked up the perfect one. It was very dirty and covered with tiny, lively mites. They took it into the house, washed it with cold water, sprayed it with bug spray and detergent and left it on the kitchen counter as a curiosity. Later in the day they noticed a small crack in the shell, so just in case, they put a small boudoir lamp beside it for warmth.
For two days they watched it. Nothing happened. But on the third day they thought the egg moved slightly. As they held it to their ears, they could hear a faint ticking inside, like a miniature time bomb.
A quail egg is a lovely thing. It is snowy white, about an inch long, softly rounded at one end and fairly pointed at the other. There certainly was something going on in this one. As they stood transfixed, tiny holes began to appear around the pointed end. Ornithologists tell us that the chick always comes out from the larger end of the egg, but not this one. When there was an almost complete circle of holes, a slight convulsive shudder came from within, and the shell parted. There emerged slowly something resembling a wet bumblebee in size and general appearance. It lay there apparently exhausted, and the doctor and his wife stood watching it in amazement. The living room clock interrupted the silence by striking two, and Mildred realized in horror that they had completely forgotten lunch. She set about preparing it while the doctor continued to gaze. The tiny thing was drying off perceptibly, moment by moment, and before they went in to lunch, they moved the lamp and the chick to the corner of the counter and, more to keep it warm and protected than for any other reason, they barricaded it with cereal boxes and a bag of groceries. When halfway through the meal, they heard a tiny little chirp, and there in the doorway stood the baby, the body now fluffed to the size of an English walnut, tottering on fragile legs, balanced precariously on big feet. They rushed to pick it up, realizing that it must have fallen off the edge of the counter to the floor. A small space between a cereal box and the bag showed clearly where the bird had found its way out of the barricade. Even at the age of about an hour, the chick had followed the sound of human voices and found the first living creatures it was to encounter—two h
uman beings.
Greatly concerned lest the fall had injured the infant, Tommy and Mildred feared this might be the end of the story—but it wasn’t. It was just the beginning. It was evident that more security must be provided, and a carton was found and bird, boudoir lamp and all were placed inside it. It looked pitiful and miserably alone. Suddenly Mildred remembered a small lamb’s-wool duster about a foot long, including the handle, which she put in the corner of the box, tying it so that the wooly part was an inch or so above the bottom of the box. That looked better. Bobby White, as he was immediately called, seemed to like it too, and was under it almost as soon as it was in place. Within half an hour from the time he was hatched, the baby had begun to change in appearance. He was now brown instead of black, and grew fluffier and downier by the minute.
What to do now was the question. They called a friend who was interested in birds, and received no encouragement at all as to their being able to save its life. However, she suggested that they go to the local duck farm and get some baby chick starter, which they immediately did. A Mason jar top full of chick starter, another containing water, and they were in business. The baby, while seeming to like the duster from the beginning, paid no attention to the food and water. Not for eight hours did he eat at all. Many people, hearing the tale, have assumed that he was force-fed at first. Not so. From the very beginning he was very self-sufficient. The only help he had was when his tiny bill was gently dipped in the water. From then on—no help.
As I attempt to chronicle this extraordinary tale, I am ever grateful that as a close friend of Mildred and Tommy I have been privileged to watch and share the life and love of this tiny bird as he grew and developed. I did not see him until the second morning of his life, when I was taken into the kitchen and invited to look in the carton. I saw the lamp, the duster and the receptacles of food and water, but nothing else. Mildred gently picked up the duster and there snuggled inside it was the exquisite little bird. She picked him out from the nest of wool and he tackled his breakfast with enthusiasm. I felt strongly that he deserved a more dignified name than Bobby, and I immediately called him Robert; and Robert he has been to all of us since then. Even then, at the puffball stage, he was really beautiful, with muted shadings in his coloring, lighter on the breast than on the back, and with very bright little eyes.
The lamb’s-wool duster proved to have been a real inspiration. Later we discovered that had he stayed with his quail mother he would have snuggled in very similar comfort, as the underfeathers of the adult quail are so fine and soft that they feel much more like fur or wool than feathers.
I wonder why it is that people are so outspokenly gloomy about the chances for survival of a little wild infant. At this stage the prophecy of the neighborhood was, “He’ll never live.” Then, after he had survived and thrived for several days, other calamity-howlers began bringing up another bugaboo: “You’ll never be allowed to keep him” . . . “It’s against the law to keep a wild bird” . . . “You’ll be in trouble,” and so on and on.
The doctor and his wife had very firm answers:
“We aren’t going to cage this little thing. We aren’t even handling him any more than we have to, to clean the carton and keep him warm and fed. He will be freed outdoors as soon as he is strong enough, but we can’t put him out in the big world now. He wouldn’t stand a ghost of a chance if we did.”
It turned out that only Robert himself knew the answers to the crepe-hangers. In the first place, he had no intention of leaving his new home for the unknown, and time was to prove that he also knew the answer to the game warden question; for we were to learn that our idea that he might be taken back into his own family of brothers and sisters was a complete fallacy: quail will not accept any bird who has been in contact with human beings.
We should have realized earlier than we did that, far from having a bird in captivity, we were helplessly and hopelessly ensnared and enamored. Robert’s development was spectacular in three areas: vocabulary, plumage and general personality traits. From the second day, he greeted his providers with distinctive chirps of pleasure and anticipation. The clucks while he was eating and scratching were in a rather high register and sweet in tone. Finely ground wild-bird food and fine gravel had been introduced, unmistakably to his delight. We could tell without looking in the carton what was going on—the happy, busy sounds and then little mournful coos which meant he wanted companionship and the indescribable little soft trills, more throaty purr than birdcall, when he was drowsy, diminishing in frequency and volume until at last he was asleep. He was never nervous, and we could look in at him as he cuddled under the duster or we could work around in the kitchen without disturbing him. When he uttered his trills it was hard to believe it was a quail and not a canary or lovebird. There was a large cage of lovebirds at the far end of the kitchen, and I often wondered if it could be possible that he imitated them. We shall never know, but the trills continued.
Robert omitted the unattractive pinfeathery stage common to the chicks of domestic fowl. His chest was the first to give indication of its subsequent beauty as the tiny soft feathers appeared over the down in a tiny chain-mail pattern. Each individual little beige feather had a lighter spot toward the tip, the tip itself being a fine border of very dark brown. The end result was exquisite, and almost defied the art of reproduction when an artist did Robert’s portrait in oils.
The top of his head darkened soon, with tiny lines of an almost old-gold color down the sides which set off his eyes startlingly. We had supposed the eyes to be black, but they were dark brown with coal-black pupils. Around the base of his neck appeared a band of light brown which darkened at the lower edge, and in front melted into the general pattern of the breast. Tiny softly patterned feathers covered his back, and the last to appear were the long wing and tail feathers. Each single feather, with the exception of those forming wing and tail, is double, with the outer feather having a separate underfeather of down coming from the same shaft. Even the tiniest ones are double, giving perfect insulation. By the time he was a few weeks old he was a beautiful little quail, although he did not achieve the full measure of his magnificent coloring and feathering until the age of three months.
The most incredible feature of his development was the emerging personality. At the age of two weeks, he showed a real fondness for the doctor, often going to sleep while in his hands during the intervals while his carton was being cleaned. This was a clear indication that the time had come to let him free. The summing up of the discussion was “We have to do it some time. We just have to make up our minds to that.”
On a warm, sunny day in early August when Robert was three weeks old, they carried him out of the house and deposited him on the lawn. The reaction was unexpected. He looked around in bewilderment for a minute or two, then with excited little calls he began scratching, biting off tender tips of grass, and almost immediately he spied a tiny bug, which he ran after and ate. Mildred and Tommy stayed out with him for about an hour, during which time Robert was busy and very contented. They felt that at least he knew instinctively how to find food, and resignedly they walked toward the house. They reached the front door and Tommy was putting his finger on the latch when a sharp, shrill call came from Robert several yards behind them, a call that said, “Hey! Wait for me!” As the door opened, Robert came running as fast as his legs could carry him, and darted in the house ahead of them. After this performance had been repeated for many days, the answer was evident: Robert was not going to leave. From then on, he was out of doors a great deal, staying near Tommy as he weeded flower beds or raked the lawn. Robert had come to stay.
On several of Robert’s outdoor excursions, his own quail family, all twelve of them, were often quite near him. There was never the slightest sign of recognition, much less reunion, on either side. Who snubbed whom was not clear. Since the grounds around the house were liberally equipped with bird-feeders of every description, and since several patches of ground were well sprinkled with wil
d-bird food, it was not strange that the mother quail had kept her family nearby.
There is abundant evidence to show that the mother quail’s injured-bird performance witnessed by the doctor was by no means uncommon. A friend of Robert’s told me that he drove home one evening from a neighboring town when it was dark enough for him to have the headlights on. In the road ahead of him he saw a “dead” quail, lying in the road, with feathers all straggly and wings limply outstretched. Being a compassionate man, he did not want the little body run over repeatedly by other cars; he stopped and went to remove the poor creature. When he was within a few feet of her she moved, got up and revealed four young quail who had been hidden beneath her. With little low cries she herded them to the side of the road, where she joined a number of other chicks who had been standing there as still as the grass itself—no doubt in response to a directive from the mother, who, with the four little stragglers, had not quite made it across the road before the oncoming car.
From my picture window I have watched a mother quail with her covey of young scattered around her, and have seen her find a succulent bug or seed, which she does not eat herself. Instead, by means of a series of sharp taps on the ground with her bill, she summons the chicks, who come running—and how they can run. This bit of knowledge was most useful in our relationship to Robert. If a little spider or bug was seen on the floor, quick taps brought him scurrying from any room in the house to pounce on the tidbit.
From the moment Robert first refused the invitation to return to the wild and ran back into the doorway, the house was his. His adjustment to its size was quite dramatic. With neck outstretched and head held slightly to one side, and with very measured tread, he stalked around investigating everything. An early discovery was that sometimes a tiny spider could be found in the baseboard. For weeks, on being taken out of his carton in the morning, Robert would methodically make the rounds investigating baseboards. The house was large and quite new, and for some time those little spiders had been pests. Within the first few weeks Robert took care of that and completely rid the home of the spiders.
That Quail, Robert Page 1
