Storks

The household stork is an injured bird whose story links Witek the Stork-Keeper’s attachment to an animal with the competing claims of adult authority and the bird’s own unruly presence. Rescued after being left behind in autumn, it is nursed in the household, taken away to the presbytery at the priest’s request, and later seen again around the farmstead: catching mice, accepting food, and raiding bread. Its recurring appearances give it a place in domestic life without making it merely obedient or tame.

Rescue and life in the household

Witek the Stork-Keeper brings the bird home in autumn after it has been left behind with a broken wing. He nurses it back to health, and it stays in the house, where it catches mice like a cat. The bird is not presented as a decorative pet: it has a practical place in the household, yet it remains distinctly itself. When The Parish Priest of Lipce leans over to stroke it, the stork will not submit to his touch; it twists its neck and pecks at his shiny shoes.

The bird’s independence is also part of its reputation among the people around it. When a visitor fears it is hiding in the corners and might peck him, Witek explains that the priest has taken it away. Another speaker dismisses it as a creature that only went for people, but Witek objects: in his account, it harmed only fools or other people’s dogs, caught mice, and kept out of everyone’s way. The contrast matters. To some, the stork is a troublesome threat; to Witek, it is a familiar, useful companion whose conduct has been misunderstood.

The priest’s request and Witek’s loss

During a visit to Maciej Boryna, The Parish Priest of Lipce takes a fancy to the stork and asks to buy it. Maciej Boryna says there is no need for a sale: the boy will soon bring it to the presbytery. The priest offers to send Walek for it, but is told that the bird will let no one touch it and listens only to Witek. Its bond with the boy thus becomes the practical obstacle to transferring it—and, ultimately, the reason Witek must accompany it.

When Witek is called, The Parish Priest of Lipce gives him a zloty and orders him to bring the bird at dusk. Witek bursts into tears. After the priest leaves, the boy takes the stork to the byre and cries until evening. Maciej Boryna quiets him with the strap and reminds him that he must take the bird. Witek obeys, but his grief remains visible: his eyes are swollen, he moves about as if stunned, and whenever he can, he throws his arms around the stork, kisses it, and weeps.

At dusk, when the priest has returned from his rounds, Witek covers the bird with his capote against the frost. Because it is heavy, he and Józka of the Boryna Household carry it together to the presbytery, both crying bitterly. Łapa runs after them, barking dolefully. The transfer is therefore not a clean exchange between adults: the scene registers the cost to the child who has cared for the bird and to the animal being carried away from its familiar home.

A bond that resists possession

Witek continues to speak as if the bird remains his, even after it has been given to the priest. When someone suggests that he could tame another stork in spring, he refuses: that one will still be his. He says that once the weather warms, he will think of a way to make the bird tire of the presbytery and fly back. His plan is not described, and the account does not say how the bird returns. What it does establish is the persistence of his attachment: the formal transfer has not altered his sense of relationship to the creature.

The episode also places the bird’s attachment to Witek beside the limits of human control. The priest can request the stork and Maciej Boryna can order the boy to deliver it, but the bird itself does not become compliant with the new owner. It had refused the priest’s touch, and Witek’s insistence that it listens only to him makes the bird’s preference part of the dispute. Its later presence back among the farmyard and orchard animals is consistent with Witek’s hope, though the narrative leaves the means and timing unstated.

Later life around the farmstead

In later scenes the stork is again active in the household’s surroundings. When Hanka the Farmstead Keeper brings soured milk and a loaf to a hungry man on the porch, the bird comes scrambling from the orchard and stalks him like a dog. As he eats, he tosses it occasional chunks. The moment places the stork within an economy of scarcity and sharing: it scavenges alongside people, receives scraps, and remains close to the household’s food and work.

That closeness is not always welcome. While Hanka is occupied with the birds on the porch and a neighbor’s sow at the fence, the stork springs onto the porch and begins pecking at the loaves, swallowing large chunks of dough. Hanka chases it, yelling, and it flees with its beak stretched out and its throat working. When she nearly catches it with a piece of wood, it takes off to the barn roof, where it stands clattering and rubbing its beak against the ridge. Hanka threatens to break its legs and reshapes the pecked loaves; when Józka arrives, she directs her anger at the girl instead. The stork’s appetite turns it from household helper into a direct nuisance, but it escapes the punishment aimed at it.

During Józka’s recovery, the stork is among her few steady companions. She spends long days mostly alone in the orchard, with Łapa and the stork near her, along with birds that come down for bread crumbs. Witek has returned to the cows, while friends, Rocho, and Agata visit only briefly. The bird’s presence is not given a dramatic explanation; it belongs to the ordinary company and small comforts surrounding a sick child.

Narrative significance

The stork recurs across contrasting forms of domestic contact: it is rescued, fed, carried away, mourned, and later encountered as a free-moving presence around the farm. It catches mice and keeps out of people’s way, but it also steals dough and pecks at a visitor’s shoes. These details resist reducing it to a simple emblem of either usefulness or affection. Its behavior has its own material consequences, and the people who live with it respond differently according to what they need or fear from it.

Witek’s grief gives the bird’s removal emotional weight, while its later movements complicate the idea that an animal can be transferred like property and thereby fully possessed. The narrative does not explain the stork’s return, nor does it assign it human thoughts. Instead, its habits—refusing a stranger’s touch, stalking food, catching mice, and clattering on the barn roof—keep its individuality in view. In that way, the household stork joins the farmstead’s working and domestic life while remaining beyond complete human command.