This was the painful sight that greeted me one morning as I stepped out to the veranda. There was the headless body. There stood the gallinule, looking as if he were thinking of nothing but the beauty and brightness of the morning.
How did I know this gallinule, Beauty Number Two, was to blame? Well, if a mother has a certain number of children, and studies the character of each one, she knows them as thoroughly as one created being can understand another. She leaves the children in a room and returns to find one hurt and crying. She looks around, and by certain indefinable signs discovers the aggressor.
The gallinule’s philosophical, uninterested air might have led an outsider astray, and for just a very short time my suspicions did wander to a cardinal bird. However, they came back to the long-legged bird, and after a time I saw him playing with the poor little goldfinch’s head. I put him through the gate leading to the elevator, and told him to stay in regions below for a time. I would not have a murderer above. He did not like this, and with his companion would come and stand at the gate, pleading to be let in, until at last I relented; and whether he understood or not, he did not kill another bird for a long time.
When I moved the birds to my farm in the country, the gallinules went too. In an ell of the house were some rooms with screened windows. The screen on one door was loose, and my first gallinule managed to insinuate his body, and get out one fine day.
Below the house was a meadow, and through the meadow ran a beautiful little river. We could hear the birds the farmers called meadow-hens laughing down there all day long, and at night the legions of frogs kept up an harmonious chant of “Rain, rain, rain!”
Along the river banks were lovely wild flowers and thick shrubbery. I imagined that the gallinule would have a delightful time in this dense covert, and as he had been clever enough to find his way to Nova Scotia from Mexico or Georgia, perhaps, when autumn came, he might be clever enough to find his way back. So I took the other gallinule and carried him out to the bank overhanging the meadow. I threw him high up in the air, and he sank down from my sight among the violets and long grass of the hillside.
From what I knew of his habits, I concluded that he would hide there till night came, then make his way to the river. I hoped that he would find Beauty Number One, and many times since I have thought that I would give a very great deal to know the ultimate fate of my two gallinules.
CHAPTER XII
FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH PIGEONS
Soon after starting my aviary in Halifax, I began to think of keeping pigeons. I had always admired the tame birds about the streets, but I had never studied them. I knew nothing whatever of their habits, except that I had once heard a woman whose husband kept a stable, say that it was perfectly surprising to see the way in which great fat young pigeons that had grown to be as large as their parents, would follow these same parents about and make them put food down their throats.