Being too young for the old crows to take seriously, their
pranks were tolerated, or they would soon have been pecked and beaten
into better manners. Too big and too grown-up for the young
crows--whom they visited in their nests and tormented till driven away
by the indignant parents--they had no associates but each other. So
they followed their own whims; and the flock was philosophically
indifferent as to what might happen to them.
"You must not think, however, that they did not learn anything, these
two. They were sharp. They listened to what was being said around
them, and the crows, you know, are the greatest talkers ever; so they
soon knew the difference between a man with a gun and a man without
one. They knew that an owl in the daytime is not the same thing as an
owl at night. They gathered that a scarecrow is not as dangerous as it
looks. And many other things that a crow needs to know and believe
they condescended to learn, because learning came easy to them. But
common caution they did not learn, because it did not seem to them
either interesting or necessary. So it was often just luck that got
them out of scrapes, though they always thought it was their own
cleverness.
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