“It is a bold mouse that makes her nest in the cat’s ear.” — Danish Proverb
A Few Thoughts about Nests
Yellow Jackets make their nests in the ground. Storks make nests; so do osprey. Machine gunners use nests and sometimes snipers, too. Alligators, blue birds, some spiders curl leaves into nests. Bees, and whole families of termites can build towers of nests. But monkeys? Do monkeys build nests?
Vespasian Warner
Well, we didn’t know it either until we were browsing in the Library of Congress American newspaper archives (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/[1]) a few days ago chasing rabbits down holes to their nests when we found a story that we think you might enjoy as much as we do.
The story was told by Vespasian Warner who served as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois from 1895 – 1905. In 1904 he ran for Governor of Illinois as a Republican, but he failed to win his party’s nomination.
It was during the time that Representative Warner was considering his run for Governor that this headline appeared in the Washington, D.C. Evening Star: “Representative Warner not trading his prospects for a nest of monkeys.” It was February 15th 1904. Mr. Warner was asked about yielding his gubernatorial aspirations to another candidate and he told this story.
“I am reminded”, he said, “of an incident which occurred a while back. My little son, eight years old, came into the house one day and his pockets were bulging with marbles, a jack knife, a top and some other boyish plunder.”
‘Where did you get it?’ his mother asked him.
‘I traded for ‘em.’
‘With whom did you trade?’
‘Oh, the kid next door.’
‘Well, what did you trade him?’
‘A nest of monkeys.’
‘Where in the world did you get a nest of monkeys?’
‘Oh, they are still in the woods.’
- Image 2 of Evening star (Washington, D.C.), February 15, 1904 https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83045462/1904-02-15/ed-1/?sp=2&q=nest+%26+marbles&r=-0.189,0.696,0.477,0.177,0 12/11/2022 ↑