After a time I began to worry about her prolonged sitting. She had no mate to relieve her, and to sit day and night, except in the short intervals when I took care of her eggs for her, was too great a strain on her constitution. So one day I went down to the aviary, got a youthful squab from one of the pigeon nests there, and taking away one of Sukey’s eggs, slipped the squab in its place. Her back was turned to me during this last maneuver, but presently she came trotting along with a straw in her beak.
When she saw the squab she stopped short with a dreadful stare, then dropping her straw she took squabbie by the neck and shook his tender flesh till I hastened to rescue him, and gave her back her egg.
Later on I took her eggs away from her and put them in a covered box. She seemed to know they were in the box, for one day I found her trying to worry the cover off, and a second day she had the cover off and was sitting on the eggs. A third time I found her standing on the box and fighting my doves away from it. This time I turned the doves away, lifted the cover, and she stepped in and sat on the eggs. One day, after I had put the eggs in the box, she flew to my shoulder, and I felt something tickling my ear. Looking around I saw that she had a straw in her beak and was trying to coax me to put it beside the eggs.
I have often felt sorry that I have not kept a record of the number of eggs that my Princess has laid. She begins in the spring and lays all summer, sometimes one, sometimes two eggs, and at intervals of about six weeks. When she was two years old I took her with my other pigeons to my farm in the country.
I now had quite a number of pigeons. Among them a special favorite was Crippie, a lame black tumbler. He was fat and in good condition, but had had since he began life an absurd walk or waddle, his legs being spread very far apart. I had been advised to kill him, but had refused. There was nothing the matter with him but his lameness, and he was a dear, gentle bird, and had been partly brought up by hand. A tumbler is supposed to turn over and over in the air as he flies, but Crippie never tumbled.
Two other pet birds were homers—Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Their parents had deserted them, and they too had been brought up by hand. Then I had magpie pigeons, an exquisite white owl pigeon called Owlie, some archangels, and specimens of a few other birds.
I had had a demure nun pigeon that I bought in Boston. At least she looked demure with her convent-like garb, but she turned out to be a vixen, and used to drive my guineapigs about the aviary till they succumbed with fright. At first it was amusing to see her marshaling the pigs and driving them before her, but I soon found out that what was fun for her was death for the pigs, so I sent her away. When I took all these fancy pigeons to the country I confined them in a loft for a time till they got used to their new quarters and began to make nests. Then I opened a window and allowed them to go out.
My whole family was impressed by the delight of these birds in real, untrammeled liberty. For generations their ancestors had been kept in confinement, but there was enough wild blood left to make them appreciate what was now spread before them. The first day I let them out they flew about uncertainly, then sat in a row on top of the carriage-house. The building was reasonably high, the barn was higher, the near-by house was surrounded by tall trees, below them were meadows, plowed fields, and a pine wood. They had altogether two hundred acres of their own property, and beyond stretched one large farm after another, along one of the most beautiful valleys in the world—the one which finally reaches the far-famed land of Longfellow’s “Evangeline.”
No wonder that the pigeons were delighted. They timidly tried another flight, then another, wheeling in wider and wider circles, always coming back to the carriage-house, and gazing about them as if they were “lost in wonder, love, and praise,” my father sagely remarked.
As the days went by they flew constantly about the farm. I never saw one leave it, though I heard of some of my old homers calling at distant farms. The young homers hatched on the place would, of course, not leave us.