In the early ’70’s these pigeons migrated through Ohio in countless numbers, I might say in clouds. We came to Canada in ’78, and I am sure I have not seen five hundred pigeons since.
Some people advance the theory that a storm blew them all into the lake. Why, bless your life, there is no lake in America that would hold them all!
I am firm in my belief that they were exterminated by a contagious disease.
The last three pigeons I shot, I shot in the fall of 1884. I was then nineteen years of age, and have a distinct recollection of what they were like. These birds were all three diseased, and were not over two-thirds the actual size of the healthy passenger pigeon. I took them home, but mother said they were not fit for food.
In northern Canada the snowshoe hare, or native rabbit, becomes so numerous about every seven or eight years that a disease sets in and fully ninety-nine out of a hundred—yes, I might say nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand—of them die off. I have seen the skeletons lie in the swamps by the dozens, and when the snow came I hunted, three weeks later, and only saw the tracks of two rabbits. This same exterminating-disease system has controlled the native rabbit in Canada, and they have died off on an average of every seven or eight years, as far back as man has any knowledge of them.
Whether this is a correct explanation of the disappearance of the passenger pigeon, or not, I have heeded the warning, and have arranged my ponds on the bathtub system, and during the late summer months the water is all let out, and the ponds allowed to dry up; then I sow wheat and rye extremely thick in the bottom to purify the soil, as the sun, and the cropping of ground, will purify the soil the same as circulation will purify water. The overflow pipe is then closed, and when the fall rains come and raise the spring, the underland drain, which is laid from the pond to the spring, floods it over, and preserves the green food in the bottom of the pond for the birds when they arrive, as this green food in the bottom of the pond will not rot but will keep fresh so long as the water remains icy cold.
17. Whereabouts in Canada is your home? And what can you raise there?
My home is two miles north of Kingsville, Ontario. Kingsville is a neat little beauty spot nestled on the north shore of Lake Erie, due north of Sandusky, Ohio, and twenty-eight miles south-east of Detroit, Michigan. Its population is about two thousand, with three well-attended churches, and two first-class hotels.
By the way, Kingsville is the most southerly town in the Dominion of Canada.
Now we can raise almost anything here, from a flagpole to a boiling-hot political quarrel, but our chief crop is corn. We condense it into hogs, and ship them just as they run. Then we bank the money to buy more land to grow more corn to feed more hogs, and so forth, and so forth.