IV
THE JUGGERNAUT
Eustace had grown old. He was nearly seven, and a widower. Hardships had seared and toughened him; so that the dread of a culinary fate, which lurks in the breasts of softer-constituted fowls, no longer beset him.
What did cause him distress, however, was the worldliness of the younger generation. Their aims were deplorably low. They went about seeking only the things of earth. Crass, superficial, they were satisfied with merely scratching the surface. And the fowl with the greatest following was ever he that bore the biggest morsel of food.
Even the land had changed for the worse. The large tract which enclosed the barnyard—that gorgeous Natural Park, scene of many a happy vacation tour, where grew stately thistles and forests of majestic weeds—had, after a disgusting orgy of fertilizer, degenerated into a sordid, monotonous, soul-less field of wheat.
Saddened by all this, Eustace plead earnestly but vainly with his fellow fowls, entreating them to moult themselves of evil. But they would not. They merely shrugged their wings and called him "the old hoot owl." But he—their taunts rolling off him like water—ceased not to warn them; for he knew that some terrible visitation must be in store.
One day it came. Along the far edge of the field moved a grim red Monster, overwhelming and ravening the wheat in its path. It had a great black-and-white pinion with which it swept the ground destroyingly; uttering the while a gruesome roar, like the grinding of huge teeth.
At sight of it Eustace was aghast. (He happened to be meditating in the solitude of the wheat stalks.) Scudding home madly, he panted:
"Look! See what has come upon us!"
The turkey, official observer for the community, stretched his tall periscope neck and studied the situation critically.