Bedichek grew up in Falls County, moving from his native Illinois to Blevins, and then to Eddy when he was a boy. He left the state two lasting legacies. He served as the state’s first University Interscholastic League (UIL) director, thus setting the foundation for today’s UIL competitions in athletics and academics.
But Bedichek is best remembered today as the author of “Adventures With a Texas Naturalist.” The late A.C. Greene of Salado included Bedichek’s book in his “The Fifty Best Books on Texas.”
In his book, Bedichek writes of his unabashed affection for the mockingbird, which was named the state bird of Texas in 1927. He liked the fact that the mockingbird is not flashy or gaudy - except perhaps in song - but it is one bird that most people can identify without too much trouble.
Bedichek accepted the mockingbird on its own terms. He took exception to the poet Wordsworth’s description of the mockingbird as “merry.”
“The mockingbird is not merry - even his song is not merry,” Bedichek wrote. “He is ever too full of business, too downright, too intense to be merry, or friendly either. Merry is not the word.”
In Bedichek’s view, the mockingbird might suffer a bit from a persecution complex. “He seems to be ever resenting an insult. Man delights not him,” he wrote.
So far, so good. But some people might say that Bedichek quit preaching and went to meddling when he asserted that the mockingbird doesn’t actually mock anything.
A mockingbird doesn’t mock? Why, isn’t that the same as saying a rattlesnake doesn’t rattle? We wouldn’t call it a mockingbird if it didn’t mock. Would we?
Dating back to the day when the English talked really funny, people have said the mockingbird mocked. “He imitateth all the birds in the woods . . . and singeth not only in the day but also at all hours of the night,” colonist Thomas Glover wrote in 1676.
More than three–and–a–half centuries later, about 95 percent of the population - Bedichek’s estimation - agreeth with Glover.
Would Bedichek, who died in 1959 while waiting for his wife’s cornbread to come out of the oven, be so skeptical today when people swear they’ve heard mockingbirds imitate cell phone chimes, pager beeps and backup alarms?
So far no one has reported hearing a mockingbird replicate a rap song and for that we can all be grateful. Having the state bird of Texas brought up on obscenity charges would never do.
Native Americans believed the mockingbird ridiculed the other birds in the forest, and a tribe of Biloxi Indians believed that it “mocked one’s words.”
Bedichek, however, aligned himself with the Choctaws, whose name for the bird translated into “bird that speaks a foreign tongue.”
Like the mockingbird itself, Bedichek doesn’t give much ground.
“If one wants to call a single note, or a phrase uttered here and there entirely out of context, the imitation of a song - that is if he doesn’t care how loosely he uses the word ‘imitation’ - he may say the mocker imitates,” Bedichek wrote. “But when I hear it said that he can fool anybody, I dissent. I have never been fooled more than momentarily by the so–called mimicry of the mockingbird.”
If they were able, mockingbirds would probably love this little disagreement for no other reason than the fact that they are masters of disagreement. Anybody who has ever watched a mockingbird drive a blue jay or robin from its territory, or watched one dive bomb a cat, or has been the very target of an overly protective mockingbird, knows that mockingbirds aren’t trying to win any popularity contests.
As for its song, mocking or not, it sings not for its supper but for its survival.
The male mockingbird does all the singing this time of the year in order to attract a mate. We can assume that the bird doesn’t care in the least whether we think it mocks or not.
In fact, it would probably mock the very idea that anybody or anything, other than another mockingbird, even cares.
ccoppedge@temple-telegram.com
