My Huckleberry Jay: What would Mark Twain say?
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Sun, 02/11/2024 - 9:03pm
Anyone who has visited my home, “Twain Haven,” has met my pet Jay, my pal, “Huckleberry.” And these welcome visitors have heard my accounts of what lengths Huckleberry will go to, to get my attention, from tapping on the window with his beak, to faking his own death.
Though few have heard about his latest antic, and those who have heard me tell it, well, they doubt its veracity, and I don’t blame them. But here is the petrified truth.
While clipping my fingernails in the nearby forest, I was casting a shadow on the forest floor when I noticed what I thought to be a chipmunk dancing around my shadow. Upon closer observation I recognized it was Huckleberry’s shadow, dancing on mine. Yes, he had positioned himself above and behind me in just such a way as to cast his shadow on mine, and dance on it, so help me God.
Mark Twain had a few things to say about the jays he encountered in his days out here in Nevada and California in the early 1860’s.
“A jay hasn’t got any more principles than a congressman has. And he can out-swear any gentleman in the mines. You think a cat can swear? Well, a cat can. Most people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use. But you give a jay a subject that calls for his reserve powers, and where’s your cat? Don’t talk to me -I know too much about this thing.”
Another antic my Huckleberry Jay will undertake to get my attention is to hop onto the flagstaff and wave the American flag. I have the video to prove this assertion if you don’t believe me. I know Mark Twain would believe me, for here’s what he had to say about the matter away back in 1880.
“Oh, a jay is everything that a man is. He loves gossip and scandal, and a jay knows when he is an ass just as well as you do — maybe better.”
To validate this characterization, I remember a Happy Hour when I dropped Huckleberry’s Beer Nut and it landed on my slipper. Huck looked at me as if to say, “Well you are an ass.” And down he flew to fetch that beer nut and fly it to the nearest roost.
As is our custom, we shall leave the last word to Mark Twain.
“No, it ain’t no use to tell me a jay hasn’t got a sense of humor ‘cuz I know better. And memory too! Oh they bring jays here from all across the United States to look down that hole, every summer! And they all laugh; except for an owl that come from Nova Scotia to visit the Yo Semite, and he took this thing in on his way back. He said he couldn’t see anything funny in it. But then he was a good deal disappointed about Yo Semite too.”
— For more than 35 years, in more than 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American." Go here for the spoken word version of this and other columns.
