THE DISOWNED CHICKS.
I have a friend living in the very heart of the big city of Chicago, who owns several hens of rare varieties, and a flock of young chickens of remarkable promise. She keeps them in her back-yard, which they utterly devastate, not suffering a green thing to live, making it look like a small copy of the Desert of Sahara. Yet she says keeping them reminds her of the country! She is a very poetic and imaginative lady. It is very likely that a hand-organ reminds her of music, and fish-balls of the mighty, briny deep.
One of this good lady’s hens is a handsome, stately fowl, dressed in gray satin, and wearing a top-knot that is like a crown of silver. She has one chicken, almost full-grown,—the last of many lively children, the victims of rats and the pip. Of him she is very fond. There was, at one time, great danger that he would be spoiled,—for she toiled for him all day, trotting about everywhere with him “at her apron-strings,” so to speak; and she actually broods him at night, though, do the best she can in spreading herself, she can’t take in all of his tail, unless she lets his head stick out somewhere. Thus he is content to sleep ingloriously, when he ought to be roosting on some lofty perch, ready to greet the first streak of dawn with a brave crow, prophetic of the day.
A few weeks ago another hen, a young pullet, dressed gayly every day in gold and brown, with a gorgeous top-knot, came, one morning, triumphantly out from under the porch, with a large flock of charming little chicklings, who toddled along after her, and glanced up at the sky, and round on the earth,—that vast sandy plain of the back-yard,—in a most knowing and patronizing manner. Nobody would have guessed it was their first day out of the shell. They were not going to show their greenness,—not they.
For a while those downy, yellow, cunning little roly-poly creatures seemed to amuse their mother; she appeared fond of them, taking pleasure in parading them before such of her neighbors as were chickenless. But she was a giddy biddy, lazy and selfish; so, as soon as she found that she must scratch to fill so many little crops, she threw up maternity in disgust. She actually cast off her whole brood, pecked at them, and scolded them till they ran from her in fright, and huddled together in a corner of the fence, peeping piteously, and doubtless wishing they had never been hatched. Perhaps some were chicken-hearted enough to wish for death to end their troubles, till they caught sight of some ugly old rat prowling about “seeking whom he might devour,” when they reconsidered the matter, and took a more cheerful view of life.
Well, it came to pass that the excellent gray hen, with the one big chicken, seeing their forlorn condition, pitied them exceedingly, and actually adopted the whole flock. Only think, children, it was as though your mother should adopt a small orphan asylum, and all of them twins!
She toils for them and protects them all day, treating them in all respects as her own chicks, till sundown; then, not having room for them under her wings without dislodging her only son and heir, she always escorts them up the steps of the porch and sees them go to bed in a little box, which has been prepared for them by their kind mistress, with a cover of slats to guard them from rats and cats and bats and owls, and every thing that prowls or lies in wait for small fowls. Well, when she has seen the last chick tumble in, and cuddle down to its place with a sleepy good-night “peep,” to be brooded under the invisible wings of the soft summer night, that good, motherly creature descends with stately dignity from the porch to her own sleeping apartment underneath, when she mounts on a box, and, calling her one long-legged darling, does her best to hover him, and to make believe he is a baby-chicken still. In the morning she is astir betimes, scratching and pecking for him and his adopted brothers and sisters with wonderful impartiality. I must do this same big chicken the justice to say that he has never made any violent opposition to this sudden addition to the family; but he has rather a haughty manner towards the little interlopers, and could we understand the sort of Chickasaw language he speaks, we might find him occasionally remonstrating with his maternal parent in this wise: “Really, mother, it strikes me you are running your benevolence into the ground, in scratching your nails off for a lot of other hen’s chickens! such things don’t pay, ma’am; charity begins at home, and one would think you had enough on your claws, in providing for the wants of a growing young cockerel like me, without doing missionary work. Besides, you are encouraging idleness and shiftlessness; it just sticks in my crop to have you burden yourself with the cast-off responsibilities of that impudent pullet, who goes cawking lazily about, carrying her top-knot as high as ever.”
The conduct of that unnatural young mother is, indeed, reprehensible. At meal-times she always comes elbowing her way through the crowd of her virtuous neighbors, to secure the largest share of corn-mush, not hesitating to rob her own children! She will be likely to have a disturbing and demoralizing influence on the female feathered community. She shirks her duties,—declines to lay eggs lest chickens should come of them. She believes the chicken population is too large already for the average supply of chickweed and grubworms. She discourages nest-making, and despises her weak-minded sisters, who, in spite of her warning, persist in laying, sitting, and hatching; who really believe in the innocence of chickenhood, and actually love to brood their chicks, to feel the soft little things stir against their breasts, and to hear now and then, in the still, dark night, their drowsy “peep, peep.” She goes against all such silly sentiment and loving slavery. She pities any poor pullet who has to spend her days in a coop, especially in Chicago. She is a sort of hen-emancipator, and strolls about at “her own sweet will,” “in maiden meditation, fancy free.”
If she could have the management of the hatchway, all chickens would be hatched with equal rights to wear the spur, and with equal gifts of crest and crow; all hatching would be done by steam, in a general incubatorium at government expense, in a way to astonish all grandmother Biddies; sittings would be abolished, coops levelled to the earth, and the sound of the cluck be heard no more in the land.
As for the poor cast-off chicks, they grow and thrive, get more steady on their legs, and put out tiny tail-feathers, tinged with gold, as the bright summer days go on. They doubtless think that their first mother was a mistake, and that their second mother is the certain true one, and honor her silver top-knot accordingly.
So you see, dear children, there is a Providence for little chickens, as well as for little sparrows.
THE END.
Cambridge: Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.