The Story of Scraggles
George Wharton James
(IDB Productions, July 6, 2019)
The Story of Scraggles Chapter I How I Came to Live in a House I was only a little baby song-sparrow, and from the moment I came out of my shell everybody knew there was something the matter with me. I don’t know what it could have been, for my brother and sister were well and strong. Perhaps I was out of the first egg that was laid, and a severe spell of cold had come and partially frozen me; or a storm had shaken the bough in which our nest was, so that I was partly “addled.” Anyhow, no matter what caused it, there was no denying the fact that when I was born I was an ailing little bird, and this made both my father and mother very cross with me. I couldn’t help being so weak, and they might have been kinder to me; but when the other eggs were hatched out and my brother and sister were born, nobody seemed to care for me any more. Of course, my mother gave me something to eat when I cried for it, but the others were so much stronger than I that they pushed me out of the way, and succeeded many a time in getting my share without mother’s knowing anything about it. I was not active like the others, and when they climbed up to the edge of the nest and stretched out their wings as if they would fly, I felt a dreadful fear come over me. I knew I should fall to the earth if I tried to fly. I don’t know why I felt this, but, do as I would, I could not get rid of the horrible feeling. I tried a number of times to overcome that sickly feeling of fear and dread, but every time I clambered to the nest’s edge I grew dizzy and had to fall back to prevent my pitching headlong forward. My father and mother both scolded me, and taunted me for my cowardice; they urged me to flap my wings more, and again and again showed me how to do it.