These patriotic birds are equally ready for peaceful campaigns, if one can call a presidential election by that name. Once, during a hotly contested election in Arizona, they did fine service in bringing the returns for outlying districts, some of them flying at the rate of a mile a minute.
France is very suspicious of foreign-trained homers, since her experience during the Franco-Prussian War. At that time she learned the great service done by pigeons in bringing relief to beleaguered Paris. Now she does foreign pigeons the honor of excluding them from France. An alien pigeon cannot take up its residence there except under such restrictions as any well-brought-up bird would resent.
Germany too has its pigeons. While traveling in that country I was amused at the military aspect of many of its inhabitants, and was not surprised to learn that it has military pigeons. One can imagine the proud carriage of a German war-bird.
CHAPTER XIV
PRINCESS SUKEY
The little kingdom of Belgium waxes most enthusiastic over pigeons. This is the great breeding center, this is the real home of the modern, thoroughbred homer. Pigeon-flying is the national pastime. One-fifth of the entire population are active fanciers, and their wonderful birds are sent away in such numbers that special trains are made up for them.
Why should it not be a national sport in America? One can think of no class of persons who would not be benefited by taking an interest in these most lovable and intelligent of birds. I have proved by my own experience that it is a delightful relief to turn from the strenuous fatigue of a modern day’s work to the quiet of a pigeon-loft. Here are hard workers, but they are quiet, calm, reposeful.
Some famous trips have been made by American birds, though, as the number of lofts increases, the tendency is not to fatigue birds by too long a journey. Five hundred mile one-day records are made, but they are not very frequent. Homers can, however, fly much farther than five hundred miles. One owned by Mr. Samuel Hunter, of Fall River, Mass., flew home from Montgomery, Ala., a distance of over one thousand miles, and two homing pigeons lately arrived in their loft in Boston, Mass., greatly exhausted by a trip from Minneapolis. They had flown about twelve hundred miles.
Homers are especially valuable for physicians with a large country practice. They are faithful and trustworthy medical messengers. The doctor leaves a pigeon with a sick patient. In a few hours it can be released and will return to its physician-owner with the latest account of the condition of his patient.
One medical man relates in a book about pigeons a charming story of a child patient who was ill with fever. The doctor had left, and the child sat with his arm around the basket containing the pigeon messenger, who was quietly waiting till the time came for him to be sent to report the boy’s condition to his master.