Chapter 8

A BIT OF MISCHIEF



JASPER JAY did not heed Mr. Crow's warning. When he learned that Mr. Red-shouldered Hawk was angry with him because he had imitated Mr. Hawk's fierce cry, "Kee-you! kee-you!" Jasper was more pleased with himself than ever. Scaring Farmer Green's hens with that piercing scream had been a good deal of fun. But making Mr. Hawk angry was still more.

So Jasper Jay began to visit the farmyard even oftener than before. If the mother-hens, with their chicks, did not happen to be scratching in the barnyard, there was always sport of some sort to be had.

One day when Jasper was on his way to Farmer Green's place, he happened to meet a blue jay friend of his known as Noisy Jake, because he was not very quiet. In fact, one could almost always hear his voice ringing through the woods.

"You seem to be in a hurry," Noisy Jake bawled. "Where are you going?"

"S-sh!" said Jasper. "I'm going to the farmyard to have some fun scaring the hens. But I don't want everybody to know it. Do you want to come along?"

Noisy Jake promptly said he did. So the two rascals hurried across the pasture and over the meadow toward the farm buildings.

"Now----" said Jasper Jay, when they had reached the farmyard--"now I'll hide in this oak here and you can hide in that one there." He pointed to a tree a little further from the chicken house than the one where he intended to perch. Naturally, it was not like Jasper Jay to give the best seat to anybody else.

"What'll we do then?" Noisy Jake asked.

"You see those hens," said Jasper. "I'm going to scream like Mr. Red-shouldered Hawk. And you'll laugh when the hens hurry their chicks out of the way.... If you want to, you may scream too--but not till after I have."

Noisy Jake agreed to Jasper's plan. And he quickly disappeared among the branches of the oak to which Jasper had sent him.

Then Jasper just had to stop and laugh to himself over the fright he was going to give the old hens. He was about to open his mouth to imitate the cry of Mr. Hawk when something happened that made him terrible angry.

"Kee-you! kee-you!" The fierce scream rang out over the farmyard. And immediately the mother-hens called to their children, with frantic clucks, to run for their lives into the chicken house.

Jasper Jay did not laugh at all over the way the chicks scurried out of sight.

"Noisy Jake has played a mean trick on me!" he said to himself. "He went and screamed before it was his turn!"

Since he didn't want to miss all the fun, Jasper let out a blood-curdling "Kee-you! kee-you!" himself, just to hurry the last hen under cover. But, somehow, he had to confess to himself--though he wouldn't have admitted it to anybody