quite dry from the chrysalis, as he clung to the swaying grass tops,
his tiny eyes sparkled keenly. And when she went zigzagging, with
breathless speed and terrifying violence, to evade the noiseless attack
of the brown owl, he hung on to her neck with the tenacity of despair
and imagined that their last hour had come. But it hadn't, for his
mother was clever and expert. She had fooled many owls in her day.

"This adventurous life of his, of course, was lived entirely at night.
During the day he slept, for the most part, folded in his mother's wing
membranes, while she hung by her toes from the edge of a warped board
in the warm goldy-brown shadows of the peak of the old barn. Outside,
along the high ridge pole, swallows, king birds, jays, and pigeons
gathered under the bright blue day to scream, chatter or coo their
ideas of life, each according to the speech of its kind. And sometimes
a cruel-eyed, hook-beaked, trim, well-bred looking hawk would perch
there on the roof--quite alone, let me tell you--and gaze around as if
wondering where all the other birds could have gone to! And once in a
while also a splendid white-headed eagle would come down out of the
blue, and wing low over the barn, and scream his thin, terrifying yelp,
as if he were hoping there might be something like spring lambs hidden
in the barn. But none of these things, affairs of the garish,
dazzling, common day, moved in the least the row of contented little
bats, all drowsing the useless hours of day away as they hung by their
toes in the soft gloom under the roof. They would wake up now and
again, to be sure, and squeak, and crowd each other a little. Or
perhaps rouse themselves enough to make a long and careful toilet,
combing their exquisitely fine fur with their delicate claws, and
passing every corner of the elastic silken membrane of their wings
daintily between their lips. But as for what went on in the gaudy
light on the outer side of the roof, it concerned them not at all.