big, brown bumping beetles,
with hard, shiny wing-covers on their backs and soft, fuzzy velvet
underneath, flew out at dusk, twenty or thirty of them, as likely as
not, would make a luncheon for Mis the clown. For he was lean and
hungry, and he ate and ate and ate; but he never grew fat. He hunted
zigzag through the twilight of the evening and the twilight of the dawn.
When the nights were bright and game was plenty, he hunted zigzag
through the moonlight. When the day was dull and insects were on the
wing, he hunted, though it was high noon. And many a midnight rambler
going home from the theatre looked up, wondering what made the darting
shadows, and saw Mis and his fellows dashing busily above where the
night-insects were hovering about the electric lights of the city
streets. He hunted long and he hunted well; but so keen was his appetite
and so huge the hunger of his twins, that it took the mother, too, to
keep the meals provided in the Nomer home.

I think they were never unhappy about it, for there is a certain
satisfaction in doing well what we can do; and there is no doubt that
these birds were made to be hunters. Mis and his kind swept the air, of
course, because they and their young were hungry; but the game they
caught, had it gone free to lay its myriad eggs, would have cost many a
farmer a fortune in sprays to save his crops, and would have added
untold discomfort to dwellers in country and city alike.

Although Mis, under his feathers, was much smaller than one would think
to look at him, there were several large things about him besides his
appetite. His mouth was almost huge, and reached way around to the sides
of his head under his eyes. It opened up more like the mouth of a frog
or a toad than like that of most birds. When he hunted he kept it
yawning wide open, so that it made a trap for many an unlucky insect
that flew straight in, without ever knowing what happened to it when it
disappeared down the great hollow throat, into a stomach so enormous
that it hardly seems possible that a bird less than twice the size of
Mis could own it.

There were other odd things about him, too--for instance, the comb he
wore on his middle toe-nail. What he did with it, I can't say. He didn't
seem to do very much with his feet anyway. They were rather feeble
little things, and he never used them in carrying home anything he
caught. He didn't even use them as most birds do when they stop to
rest; for, instead of s