d outraged motherhood. A throstle or a
whippoorwill is raising a family in the gutter spout over the back
kitchen. I go into the bathroom to shave and Titania whispers sharply,
"You mustn't shave in there. There's a tomtit nesting in the shutter
hinge and the light from your shaving mirror will make the poor little
birds crosseyed when they're hatched." I try to shave in the dining-room
and I find a sparrow's nest on the window sill. Finally I do my toilet
in the coal bin, even though there is a young squeaking bat down there.
A bat is half mouse anyway, so Titania has less compassion for its
feelings. Even if that bat grows up bow-legged on account of premature
excitement, I have to shave somewhere.

We can't play croquet at this time of year, because the lawn must be
kept clear for the robins to quarry out worms. The sound of mallet and
ball frightens the worms and sends them underground, and then it's
harder for the robins to find them. I suppose we really ought to keep a
stringed orchestra playing in the garden to entice the worms to the
surface. We have given up frying onions because the mother robins don't
like the odor while they're raising a family. I love my toast crusts,
but Titania takes them away from me for the blackbirds. "Now," she says,
"they're raising a family. You must be generous."

If my garden doesn't amount to anything this year the birds will be my
alibi. Titania makes me do my gardening in rubber-soled shoes so as not
to disturb the birds when they are going to bed. (They begin yelping at
4 a.m. right outside the window and never think of my slumbers.) The
other evening I put on my planting trousers and was about to sow a
specially fine pea I had brought home from town when Titania made signs
from the window. "You simply mustn't wear those trousers around the
house in nesting season. Don't you know the birds are very sensitive
just now?" And we have been paying board for our cat on Long Island for
a whole year because the birds wouldn't like his society and plebeian
ways.

Marathon has come to a pretty pass, indeed, when the commuters are to be
dispossessed in this way by a lot of birds, orioles and tomtits and
yellow-bellied nuthatches. Some of these days a wren will take it into
its head to build a nest on the railroad track and we'll all have to
walk to town. Or a chicken hawk will settle in our icebox and we'll
starve to death.

As I have said before, I believe in keeping nature in its p