The Diary of a Goose Girl - Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin (classic english novels txt) 📗

in the first instance. The weak ones get in with the strong and are in danger of being trampled; two May goslings that look almost full-grown have run into a house with a brood of ducklings a week old. There are twenty-seven crowded into one coop, five in another, nineteen in another; the gosling with one leg has to come out, and the duckling threatened with the gapes; their place is with the "invaleeds," as Phoebe calls them, but they never learn the location of the hospital, nor have the slightest scruple about spreading contagious diseases.

Finally, when we have separated and sorted exhaustively, an operation in which Phoebe shows a delicacy of discrimination and a fearlessness of attack amounting to genius, we count the entire number and find several missing. Searching for their animate or inanimate bodies, we "scoop" one from under the tool-house, chance upon two more who are being harried and pecked by the big geese in the lower meadow, and discover one sailing by himself in solitary splendour in the middle of the deserted pond, a look of evil triumph in his bead-like eye. Still we lack one young duckling, and he at length is found dead by the hedge. A rat has evidently seized him and choked him at a single throttle, but in such haste that he has not had time to carry away the tiny body.

"Poor think!" says Phoebe tearfully; "it looks as if it was 'it with some kind of a wepping. I don't know whatever to do with the rats, they're gettin' that fearocious!"

Before I was admitted into daily contact with the living goose (my previous intercourse with him having been carried on when gravy and stuffing obscured his true personality), I thought him a very Dreyfus among fowls, a sorely slandered bird, to whom justice had never been done; for even the gentle Darwin is hard upon him. My opinion is undergoing some slight modifications, but I withhold judgment at present, hoping that some of the follies, faults, vagaries, and limitations that I observe in Phoebe's geese may be due to Phoebe's educational methods, which were, before my advent, those of the darkest ages.


CHAPTER IV

July 9th.

By the time the ducks and geese are incarcerated for the night, the reasonable, sensible, practical-minded hens--especially those whose mentality is increased and whose virtue is heightened by the responsibilities of motherhood--have gone into their own particular rat- proof boxes, where they are waiting in a semi-somnolent state to have the wire doors closed, the bricks set against them, and the bits of sacking flung over the tops to keep out the draught. We have a great many young families, both ducklings and chicks, but we have no duck mothers at present. The variety of bird which Phoebe seems to have bred during the past year may be called the New Duck, with certain radical ideas about woman's sphere. What will happen to Thornycroft if we develop a New Hen and a New Cow, my imagination fails to conceive. There does not seem to be the slightest danger for the moment, however, and our hens lay and sit and sit and lay as if laying and sitting were the twin purposes of life.

The nature of the hen seems to broaden with the duties of maternity, but I think myself that we presume a little upon her amiability and natural motherliness. It is one thing to desire a family of one's own, to lay eggs with that idea in view, to sit upon them three long weeks and hatch out and bring up a nice brood of chicks. It must be quite another to have one's eggs abstracted day by day and eaten by a callous public, the nest filled with deceitful substitutes, and at the end of a dull and weary period of hatching to bring into the world another person's children--children, too, of the wrong size, the wrong kind of bills and feet, and, still more subtle grievance, the wrong kind of instincts, leading them to a dangerous aquatic career, one which the mother may not enter to guide, guard, and teach; one on the brink of which she must ever stand, uttering dryshod warnings which are never heeded. They grow used to this strange order of things after a bit, it is true, and are less anxious and excited. When the duck-brood returns safely again and again from what the hen-mother thinks will prove a watery grave, she becomes accustomed to the situation, I suppose. I find that at night she stands by the pond for what she considers a decent, self-respecting length of time, calling the ducklings out of the water; then, if they refuse to come, the mother goes off to bed and leaves them to Providence, or Phoebe.

The brown hen that we have named Cornelia is the best mother, the one who waits longest and most patiently for the web-footed Gracchi to finish their swim.

When a chick is taken out of the incubytor (as Phoebe calls it) and refused by all the other hens, Cornelia generally accepts it, though she had twelve of her own when we began using her as an orphan asylum. "Wings are made to stretch," she seems to say cheerfully, and with a kind glance of her round eye she welcomes the wanderer and the outcast. She even tended for a time the offspring of an absent-minded, light-headed pheasant who flew over a four-foot wall and left her young behind her to starve; it was not a New Pheasant, either; for the most conservative and old-fashioned of her tribe occasionally commits domestic solecisms of this sort.

There is no telling when, where, or how the maternal instinct will assert itself. Among our Thornycroft cats is a certain Mrs. Greyskin. She had not been seen for many days, and Mrs. Heaven concluded that she had hidden herself somewhere with a family of kittens; but as the supply of that article with us more than equals the demand, we had not searched for her with especial zeal.

The other day Mrs. Greyskin appeared at the dairy door, and when she had been fed Phoebe and I followed her stealthily, from a distance. She walked slowly about as if her mind were quite free from harassing care, and finally approached a deserted cow-house where there was a great mound of straw. At this moment she caught sight of us and turned in another direction to throw us off the scent. We persevered in our intention of going into her probable retreat, and were cautiously looking for some sign of life in the haymow, when we heard a soft cackle and a ruffling of plumage. Coming closer to the sound we saw a black hen brooding a nest, her bright bead eyes turning nervously from side to side; and, coaxed out from her protecting wings by youthful curiosity, came four kittens, eyes wide open, warm, happy, ready for sport!

The sight was irresistible, and Phoebe ran for Mr. and Mrs. Heaven and the Square Baby. Mother Hen was not to be embarrassed or daunted, even if her most sacred feelings were regarded in the light of a cheap entertainment. She held her ground while one of the kits slid up and down her glossy back, and two others, more timid, crept underneath her breast, only daring to put out their pink noses! We retired then for very shame and met Mrs. Greyskin in the doorway. This should have thickened the plot, but there is apparently no rivalry nor animosity between the co-mothers. We watch them every day now, through a window in the roof. Mother Greyskin visits the kittens frequently, lies down beside the home nest, and gives them their dinner. While this is going on Mother Blackwing goes modestly away for a bite, a sup, and a little exercise, returning to the kittens when the cat leaves them. It is pretty to see her settle down over the four, fat, furry dumplings, and they seem to know no difference in warmth or comfort, whichever mother is brooding them; while, as their eyes have been open for a week, it can no longer be called a blind error on their part.

When we have closed all our small hen-nurseries for the night, there is still the large house inhabited by the thirty-two full-grown chickens which Phoebe calls the broilers. I cannot endure the term, and will not use it. "Now for the April chicks," I say every evening.

"Do you mean the broilers?" asks Phoebe.

"I mean the big April chicks," say I.

"Yes, them are the broilers," says she.

But is it not disagreeable enough to be a broiler when one's time comes, without having the gridiron waved in one's face for weeks beforehand?

The April chicks are all lively and desirous of seeing the world as thoroughly as possible before going to roost or broil. As a general thing, we find in the large house sixteen young fowls of the contemplative, flavourless, resigned-to-the-inevitable variety; three more (the same three every night) perch on the roof and are driven down; four (always the same four) cling to the edge of the open door, waiting to fly off, but not in, when you attempt to close it; nine huddle together on a place in the grass about forty feet distant, where a small coop formerly stood in the prehistoric ages. This small coop was one in which they lodged for a fortnight when they were younger, and when those absolutely indelible impressions are formed of which we read in educational maxims. It was taken away long since, but the nine loyal (or stupid) Casabiancas cling to the sacred spot where its foundations rested; they accordingly have to be caught and deposited bodily in the house, and this requires strategy, as they note our approach from a considerable distance.

Finally all are housed but two, the little white cock and the black pullet, who are still impish and of a wandering mind. Though headed off in every direction, they fly into the hedges and hide in the underbrush. We beat the hedge on the other side, but with no avail. We dive into the thicket of wild roses, sweetbrier, and thistles on our hands and knees, coming out with tangled hair, scratched noses, and no hens. Then, when all has been done that human ingenuity can suggest, Phoebe goes to her late supper and I do sentry-work. I stroll to a safe distance, and, sitting on one of the rat-proof boxes, watch the bushes with an eagle eye. Five minutes go by, ten, fifteen; and then out steps the white cock, stealthily tiptoeing toward the home into which he refused to go at our instigation. In a moment out creeps the obstinate little beast of a black pullet from the opposite clump. The wayward pair meet at their own door, which I have left open a few inches. When all is still I walk gently down the field, and, warned by previous experiences, approach the house from behind. I draw the door to softly and quickly; but not so quickly that the evil-minded and suspicious black pullet hasn't time to spring out, with a make-believe squawk of fright--that induces three other blameless chickens to fly down from their perches and set the whole flock in a flutter. Then I fall from grace and call her a Broiler; and when, after some minutes of hot pursuit, I catch her by falling over her in the