A gentleman had two pairs of pigeons living in dovecotes placed side by side. In each pigeon family, there was a father and mother-bird and two little ones. On a certain day, the parents in one dovecote went away to get food, and while they were gone, one of their little birds fell out of the dovecote and down to the ground.
The poor baby bird was not much hurt, strange to say, but it could not get back, for it was too young to fly. Now, the parents in the other dovecote were at home when this happened, and it seemed as if they said to themselves: “One of our babies might fall out in just that same way. We must do something to make the dovecote safer.”
And then, this wise, careful father and mother went to work. They flew about until they found some small sticks. These they carried to their own dovecote and there, in the doorway, they built a cunning little fence of sticks!
Not so high but that the baby pigeons could look over it, but high enough to keep them from ever falling out of the dovecote as their little neighbour had done.
The owner of the pigeons, who had seen the birdling fall and had put it back into its dovecote, watched the birds the whole time as they gathered the sticks and built the little fence across the doorway.
