The Adventures of a Suburbanite

by Ellis Parker Butler

Mr. Prawley, when he saw we were going to keep our hen, came out and spoke to Mr. Millington, Mr. Rolfs, and me. He said he had an aversion to hens, but that if I insisted he would devote some of his time to the hen, but Mr. Millington, Mr. Rolfs, and I assured him we would not need his help. We felt that the three of us, with occasional aid from Isobel, could manage that hen.

The next day Mr. Millington and Mr. Rolfs were so swelled with pride that they would not speak to me on the train. Millington did not ask me, that entire day, to take a little run up to Port Lafayette in his automobile. I heard him tell one man on the train to town that he had just set his eighteen prize White Orpingtons, and I heard Rolfs tell another man, at the same time, about a coop he had just had made for his White Wyandottes. He drew a sketch of it on the back of an envelope, showing the location of the heating plant, the location of the gasoline brooders, and the battery of eight electric incubators. He said he saw but one mistake he had made, which was that he had had a gravel roof put on. It should have been slate. He was afraid the hens would fly up onto the roof and eat the gravel for digestive purposes, and if a lot of tarry gravel got in their craws and stuck together in a lump, his hens would suffer from indigestion. But he said he meant to have the gravel roof taken off at once, regardless of cost, but he had not quite decided on a slate roof. One of the slates might become loosened and fall and kill one of his prize White Wyandottes, which he held at seventy-five dollars each. If he could avoid the tar trouble, Rolfs said, he ought to have twelve hundred laying hens by the end of the summer, besides the broilers he would sell. He said he was going straight to a distinguished chemist when he reached town to learn if there was any dissolvent that would dissolve tar in a chicken's craw, without harming the craw.

Then Millington drew a sketch of the automatic heat regulator he was having made to attach to his heating apparatus. He said that ever since he had been keeping poultry he had made a study of coop heating, and that the trouble with most coops was that they were either too hot or too cold. He said a cold coop meant that the chickens got chilly and exhausted their vitality growing thick feathers when all their strength should have been used in egg-laying, and that a hot coop meant that the chickens felt lax and indolent. A hot coop enervated a chicken and made it too lazy to lay eggs, Millington said, but this regulator he was having made would keep the heat at an even temperature, summer and winter, and render the hens bright and cheerful and inclined to do their best. Millington explained that this was especially necessary with White Orpingtons, which are great eaters and consequently more inclined toward nervous dyspepsia, which makes a hen moody. He was going on in this way, and every one was hanging on his words, when he happened to say that one thing he always attended to most particularly was the state of his hens' teeth. He said he had, so far, avoided dyspepsia in his hens, by keeping their teeth in good condition. Every one knew poor teeth caused stomach troubles.

That was the end of Millington. Rolfs had been green with jealousy because so many commuters were listening to Millington, and the moment Millington mentioned teeth Rolfs sneered.

“How many teeth do White Orpingtons have, Millington?” he asked.

“I did not know they had any.”

Then Millington saw his mistake, and did his best to explain that as a rule chickens had no teeth, but that he had, by a process of selection, created a strain that had eighteen teeth, nine above and nine below, but no one believed him, and Rolfs was crowing over him when he made his mistake. He was bragging that he never made a mistake of that kind, because he knew hens never got indigestion in any such way. All that was necessary he said, was to let them have plenty of exercise, and to let them out once in a while for a good fly. He said he let his hens out once every three days, so they could fly from tree to tree.

Then Millington asked, sneeringly, how high his hens could fly, and Rolfs said they were in such good condition they thought nothing of flying to the top of a forty-foot elm tree, and Millington sneered and said any one could guess what kind of White Wyandottes Rolfs had, when a common White Wyandotte is so heavy it cannot fly over a rake handle. That was the end of Rolfs, and I was glad of it, for the two of them had been getting enough reputation on the strength of my chickens. They sneaked out of the smoking car, and at last I had a chance to say a few words, modestly of course, about my splendid group of six hundred Buff Leghorns. I did not brag, as Millington and Rolfs had bragged, but stated facts coldly and calmly, and my words met the attention they deserved, for I was not speaking without knowledge, as Millington and Rolfs had spoken, but as a man who owns a hen can speak.

I reached home that evening in a pleasant state of mind, for I knew how kind hearted Isobel is, and I knew she would see, if I placed it before her, that it was extremely cruel to keep a hen in solitary confinement, when the hen had probably been accustomed to a great deal of society. I felt sure that in a few days Isobel would order me to purchase enough more poultry to allow Spotty to lead a pleasant and sociable life. But when Isobel met me at the gate she disheartened me.

She said the grocer's grandmother had not been seriously ill, after all; she had been in a mere comatose condition, and had come to, and the grocer had come back, and he had called and taken Spotty. He offered to kill her—Spotty, not Isobel or his grandmother—but Isobel could not bear to eat Spotty so soon after she had been a member of our family, so the grocer took Spotty away and sent up another roaster. At least he said it was another, but after I had carved it I had my doubts. In general strength and durability the roaster and Spotty were one.