Horse Fiddle

Horse Fiddle To keep the squirrels from fields of corn, and crows also, those farmers made a kind of windmill out of rags and rusty parts. Old wires and bits of iron would scrape and scratch, screech out like owls or ghosts when a faint breeze would touch the rough contraption. A scarecrow for the ears, the thing they called a 'horse fiddle' would cry out loud and shriek like fiddlers mad, or nails jerked on a blackboard. The rig repelled the critters and the crows like music in reverse. The air was poisoned with cacophony. But when the wind died down the noise would stop and corn-attracted ones slipped back from woods or flapped from pines high on the ridge to savor milky kernels, and the music of stillness. —Robert Morgan 34 ...