The Birds in the Letter Box
by Rene BazinGenre: Comedy
Setting:
Format of Original Source: Short Story
Recommended Adaptation Length:
Candidate for Adaptation? Not Reviewed
EXCERPT:
Fortunately, their return was prompt; a sparrow led the way, a jay followed, and then the whole swarm was back at work. And the abbé could walk up and down, close his book or open it, and murmur: “They’ll not leave me a berry this year!”
It made no difference; not a bird left his prey, any more than if the good abbé had been a cone-shaped pear-tree, with thick leaves, balancing himself on the gravel of the walk.
The birds know that those who complain take no action. Every year they built their nests around the parsonage of St. Philémon in greater numbers than anywhere else. The best places were quickly taken, the hollows in the trees, the holes in the walls, the forks of the apple-trees and the elms, and you could see a brown beak, like the point of a sword, sticking out of a wisp of straw between all the rafters of the roof. One year, when all the places were taken, I suppose, a tomtit, in her embarrassment, spied the slit of the letter-box protected by its little roof, at the right of the parsonage gate. She slipped in, was satisfied with the result of her explorations, and brought the materials to build a nest. There was nothing she neglected that would make it warm, neither the feathers, nor the horsehair, nor the wool, nor even the scales of lichens that cover old wood.
One morning the housekeeper came in perfectly furious, carrying a paper. She had found it under the laurel bush, at the foot of the garden.
“Look, sir, a paper, and dirty, too! They are up to fine doings!”
“Who, Philomène?”
“Your miserable birds; all the birds that you let stay here! Pretty soon they’ll be building their nests in your soup-tureens!”
VIEW SOURCE DOCUMENT
BACK TO LISTINGS