“Whole, but without the shell?” queried Emile.
“No, my friend; with the shell too; in fact, nuts just as the tree bears them.”
“A nut with the shell, no matter how small, must make a hard mouthful to swallow, and still harder to digest.”
“I don’t deny it; but finally, with the finger pushing the nut a little into the throat, and the hand gently pressing from the base of the beak to the crop, the voluminous mouthful ends by going down, not without some grimaces on the part of the bird.”
“And reason enough for them!” exclaimed Emile.
“One nut would be nothing; but that is not all. The next day they force it to swallow two, the next [[80]]three, and so on, augmenting the dose each day. In Provence they stop at forty nuts a day; elsewhere they go on to a hundred.”
“And the turkey does not die, stuffed thus with nuts as large and hard as stones?” asked Jules.
“You would be pleased to see how the bird prospers and fattens on food that would choke any other creature.”
“With a hundred nuts in its crop, or even only forty,” was Louis’s comment, “the turkey can’t be very comfortable.”
“They are not swallowed all at one time, but in portions during the day.”