Explore "Wild Life Near Home" by Dallas Lore Sharp on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The eternal distinctions of right and wrong upon which the moral law is based inhere even in the jelly of the amoeba. The Decalogue binds all the way down. In the course of a little observation one must find how faithfully the animals, as a whole, keep the law, and how sadly, at times, certain of them are wont to break it.
To pass over such notorious cases as the cow-bird, cuckoo, turkey-buzzard, and crow, there is still cause for positive alarm, if the birds have souls, in the depraved habit of duplicity common among them. In a single short tramp, one June afternoon, no less than five different birds attempted to deceive me. The casuist may be able to justify all five of them; for, no doubt, there are extremities when this breach of the law should not merit condemnation; but even so, if in the limits of one short walk _five_ little innocents deliberately act out the coolest of falsehoods, one cannot help wondering if it is not true that the whole creation needs redeeming.