Tales of a Poultry Farm.

by Clara Dillingham Pierson.

INTRODUCTION

My Dear Little Readers:--I have often wondered why there were not more stories written about Chickens and their friends, and now I am glad that there have been so few, for I have greatly enjoyed writing some for you. Did I ever tell you that I cared for my father's Chickens when I was a little girl? That was one of my duties, and the most pleasant of all. It was not until I was older that I became acquainted with Ducks, Geese, and Turkeys, and I always wish that I might have lived on a poultry farm like the one of which I have written, for then I could have learned much more than I did.

You must not think that I understand no language but English. I learned Chicken-talk when I was very young; and in the fall, when the Quails wander through the stubble-fields near my home, I have many visits with them, calling back and forth "Bob White! Bob White!" and other agreeable things which they like to hear. My little boys can talk exactly like Chickens, and sometimes they pretend that they are Chickens, while I talk Turkey to them.

When you have a chance, you must learn these languages. They are often very useful to one. My friend, who drives in his Hens by imitating the warning cry of a c.o.c.k, had been a teacher in a college for several years before he studied poultry-talk, and it helped him greatly.

You see, one must learn much outside of school, as well as inside, in order to be truly well educated. You should never look at poultry and say, "Why, they are only Hens!" or "Why, they are only Ducks!" Quite likely when they look at you they may be thinking, "Why, they are only boys!" or "Why, they are only girls!" Yet if you are gentle and care for them, you and they will learn to think a great deal of each other, and you will win new friends among the feathered people.

Your friend, CLARA D. PIERSON.

STANTON, MICHIGAN,

_March 21, 1904._

THE FARM IS SOLD

"You stupid creature!" cackled the Brown Hen, as she scrambled out of the driveway. "Don't you know any better than to come blundering along when a body is in the middle of a fine dust bath? How would you like to have me come trotting down the road, just as you were nicely sprawled out in it with your feathers full of dust? I think you would squawk too!"

The Brown Hen drew her right foot up under her ruffled plumage and turned her head to one side, looking severely at Bobs and Snip as they backed the lumber wagon up to the side porch. "I say," she repeated, "that you would squawk too!"

The Brown Hen's friends had been forced to run away when she did, but they had already found another warm place in the dust and were rolling and fluttering happily there. "Come over here," they called to her. "This is just as good a place as the other. Come over and wallow here."

"No!" answered the Brown Hen, putting down her right foot and drawing up her left. "No! My bath is spoiled for to-day. There is no use in trying to take comfort when you are likely to be run over any minute."

She turned her head to the other side and looked severely at Bobs and Snip with that eye. The Brown Hen prided herself on her way of looking sternly at people who displeased her. She always wished, however, that she could look at them with both eyes at once. She thought that if this were possible she could stop their nonsense more quickly.

Snip could not say anything just then. He was trying to be polite, and it took all his strength. He was young and wanted to have a good Horse laugh. He could not help thinking how a Horse would look covered with feathers and sprawling in the middle of the road. Of course the Brown Hen had not meant it in exactly that way, but was as unlucky as most people are when they lose their tempers, and amused the very people whom she most wanted to scold.

Bobs was a steady old gray Horse, and he was used to the Brown Hen. "I am sorry that we had to disturb you," he said pleasantly. "You looked very comfortable and I tried to turn out, but the Farmer held the lines so tightly that I could not. The bit cut into my mouth until I could not stand it. You see he wanted to back the wagon up right here, and so he couldn't let us turn out. We'll do better next time if we can."

The Brown Hen let both her feet down and took a few steps forward. "If you couldn't help it, of course I won't say anything more," she remarked, and walked off.

"P-p-p-p-p-p-p-p!" said Snip, blowing the air out between his lips.

"Why did you bother to tell her that? She is so fussy and cross about everything that I wouldn't tell her I was sorry. Why doesn't she just find another place, as the other Hens do?"

"Snip," said Bobs, "I used to talk in that way when I was a Colt, but I find that it makes things a good deal pleasanter around the place if I take a little trouble to say 'I am sorry' when I have to disturb people. You know how the Farmer does at noon? He comes into the stall when I have finished my dinner, and he gives me a pat and says, 'Come along, old fellow. We'd rather be lazy, but we have to work.' Do you think I'd hang back then? I tell you when I want to balk. It is when the Hired Man leads me out with a jerk. That makes me kick."

"I wonder if she will take her dust bath now?" said Snip.

"Oh no," answered Bobs. "Any other Hen on the farm would, but the Brown Hen will not. She will stalk around all day thinking what a hard time she has and talking about it, but she won't take her dust bath, not although every other fowl on the place should wallow beside her."

"Then I don't see what good it did for you to tell her you were sorry," said Snip, who never liked to confess that he was wrong.

"It did a lot of good," said Bobs, steadily. "Before that she was fussy and cross. Now she is only fussy. Besides, I really had to say something to her, and if it had not been pleasant it would have had to be unpleasant, and then there would have been two cross people instead of one. Quite likely there would have been even more before the day was over, for if each of us had gone on being cross we would have made more of our friends cross, and there is no telling where it would have ended. I'd feel mean, anyhow, if I lost my temper with a Hen. Imagine a great big fellow like me getting cross with a little creature like her, who has only two legs, and can't get any water into her stomach without tipping her head back for each billful."

Snip had wanted to ask many more questions, but so much began to happen that he quite forgot about the Brown Hen. The Farmer and the Hired Man had gone into the house, and now they came out, carrying a cook-stove between them. This they put into the wagon, covering it with rag carpet. The Farmer's Wife came to the door with rolled-up sleeves and a towel tied over her head. She looked tired but happy. In her hands she carried the legs of the stove, which she tucked into the oven.

This was a great event to happen on the quiet farm. Brown Bess and her new Calf came close to the fence which separated their pasture from the driveway, and stood looking on. The Pigs and their mother pressed hard against the walls of their pen on the two sides from which anything could be seen. Each of the nine Pigs thought that he had the poorest place for peeping, so he wriggled and pushed and pushed and wriggled to get a better one, and it ended in none of them seeing anything, because they were not still long enough. Their mother, being so much taller than they, had a crack all to herself and could see very well. "I don't understand why they want to do that," she sighed, as she lay down for another nap. "It was after the snow came that they brought the stove out here. But you can never tell what the people who live in houses and wear clothing will do next! They really seem to like to pick things up and carry them around. They are so silly."

The Gander came along with his wife and the other Geese. He ate gra.s.s while they visited with the Hens in the road. The Hens told him all they knew, even what the Barred Plymouth Rock Hen had seen when she walked along the porch and peeped in at the open kitchen door. Then the Geese waddled back to where the Gander was and told him all the Hens had told them. He listened to it, asking a good many questions, and then said that it was just like Geese to be so interested in other people's business. That made them feel quite ashamed, so they ate a little gra.s.s to make themselves feel better, and then stood around to watch the loading of the wagon.

Besides the stove, the kitchen and dining-room furniture was put in, with a few of the largest plants from the sitting-room, and when the Farmer drove off he had the clock beside him on the seat, the churn between his knees, and a big bundle of some sort on his lap.

It suddenly seemed very dull on the farm. One of the Doves flew along above the team for a while and brought back the news that they had turned toward town. There was nothing now to be done but to wait until they returned and then ask as many questions as possible of the Horses.

"I believe that the family is going to move into town," said the White c.o.c.k, who always expected sad things to happen. Even when there was not a cloud in the sky, he was sure that it would rain the next day.

That was probably because he was careless about what he ate. The Shanghai c.o.c.k said that he did not take half gravel enough, and any sensible fowl will tell you that he cannot be truly happy unless he eats enough gravel.

"What will ever become of us," asked the Hens, "if the family moves to town? It is their business to stay here and take care of us."

"c.o.c.k-a-doodle-doo!" crowed the Young c.o.c.k. "Let them go. I can have a good enough time in the fields finding my own food."

The Pullets looked at him admiringly. "But who will take care of us?"

they asked.

"I will," said he, holding his head very high. And that was exactly what they wanted him to say, although each of them would rather have had him say it to her alone.

"There will be n.o.body left to set traps for the Rats and the Weasels,"

said an old Hen, who had seen much of the ways of poultry-yards. "And if our Chickens have the gapes, who will make horse-hair loops and pull the little Worms out of their throats? I have always said that it was well to have people living in the farmhouse."

"Well," said the Brown Hen, "I hope that if they go they will take the Horses with them. There is no pleasure in life when one is all the time afraid of being run over. You know what happened this morning, when I had started to take my dust bath. I spoke to the Horses about it afterward, and Bobs was very polite, but that didn't give me the bath which he and that silly young Snip had spoiled. And I do not feel at all like myself without a bath."

"Take it now then," said the Shanghai c.o.c.k, who never bothered to be polite. "You ought to be able to get it in while the team is going to town and back."

"No," said the Brown Hen, firmly, "it is too far past the time when I should have taken it. I was never one of those Hens who can wallow from morning until night. I need my bath and I ought to have it, but when I have been kept from it so long I simply have to go without it."

The other Hens said nothing. In nearly every poultry-yard there is one fowl who is so fussy as to make everybody else uncomfortable. The rest become used to it after a while and do not answer back when she talks so.

In the house, the Farmer's Wife was hurrying to and fro, showing the Hired Man where to put this or calling him to lift that, and every little while something else would be brought out and placed on the side porch. Once a basket of wax fruit was set on a table there. The gla.s.s which usually covered it was put to one side, and the Young c.o.c.k who had promised to care for the Pullets flew up to peck at it. He knew it was not right, but he got one hurried billful from the side of the reddest peach just as the Hired Man threw an old shoe at him.

"How does it taste?" cried the Geese, who were still hanging around to find out what they could. The Young c.o.c.k did not reply, but wiped his bill on the gra.s.s for a long time. He feared he would never be able to open it again. The peaches which he had eaten the fall before had not stuck his bill together in this way, and he was now more sure than ever that the people who lived in houses did not know very much. "Such fruit should be thrown away," he said. "It must be eating such peaches as this which keeps the Boy chewing so much of the time. I have watched him, and he carries something in his mouth which he chews and chews and chews, but never swallows. Once his mother made him throw it away, and I should think she would. He waggled his jaws very much like a Cow." Then he strolled off toward the woods to get away from the other fowls.

In the middle of the afternoon the team came back drawing the empty wagon. All the poultry came sauntering toward the barn, making excuses as they came. "Too hot out in the sunshine," said the Brown Hen. "I really cannot stand it any longer."

"The Geese would come up to the barn," said the Gander, "so I thought I might as well come along."

"Shouldn't wonder if they would throw out some corn when they get through unharnessing," said the Gobbler.

The Ducks never kept up with the others, and they were close to the house when Bobs and Snip stopped there. "How very lucky!" they quacked, for they were a truthful family and not given to making excuses. "We hope you will tell us what all this means. Are the Farmer's people moving away?"