The ostrich's body is literally "a bag of bones;" and the enormously-developed thighs, which are the only fleshy part of the bird, are quite bare, their coarse skin being of a peculiarly ugly blue-grey colour. The little flat head, much too small for the huge body, is also bald, with the exception of a few stiff bristles and scanty tufts of down; such as also redeem the neck from absolute bareness. During the breeding season the bill of the male bird, and the large scales on the fore part of his legs, assume a beautiful deep rose-colour, looking just as if they were made of the finest pink coral; in some cases the skin of the head and neck also becomes red at that time.
The North African or Barbary ostriches, several of which are to be seen at the Jardin d'Essai, in Algiers, have bright red thighs, head, and neck, and are altogether far handsomer than the Cape birds; their feathers also, being larger, softer, and possessing longer filaments, command much higher prices than those of their southern brethren.
Altogether, ostriches are queer-looking creatures; they are so awkward, so out of proportion, and everything about them, with the exception of their plumage and their big, soft, dark eyes, is so quaintly ugly as to suggest the idea that they have only by some mistake survived the Deluge, and that they would be more in their right place embedded in the fossiliferous strata of the earth than running about on its surface. And how they do run! Only startle an ostrich; and very little is sufficient to do this, his nerves being of the feeblest, and "his heart in his mouth" at even the smallest or most imaginary danger. What a jump he gives, and what a swerve to one side! Surely it must have dislocated some of his joints. But no; off he goes, flinging out his clumsy legs, and twisting himself about as he runs, till you almost expect to see him come to pieces, or, at any rate, fling off a leg, as a lobster casts a claw, or a frightened lizard parts from its tail. An ostrich's joints seem to be all loose, like those of a lay-figure when not properly tightened up. He rapidly disappears from view; and the last you see of him he is, as Mark Twain has it, "still running"—apparently with no intention of stopping till he has reached the very centre of Africa. But his mad scamper will most probably end a few miles off, with a tumble into a wire fence, and a broken leg.
Sometimes, however, ostriches, when they take fright, run so long and get so far away that their owner never recovers them. One we heard of, to whose tail a mischievous boy had tied a newspaper, went off at railway speed, and no tidings of it were ever received. Once, when T—— was collecting his birds for plucking, one of them was unaccountably seized with a sudden panic, and bolted; and though T—— mounted at once and rode after it, he neither saw nor heard of it again.
On a large farm, when plucking is contemplated, it is anything but an easy matter to collect the birds—the gathering together of ours was generally a work of three days. Men have to be sent out in all directions to drive the birds up, by twos and threes, from the far-off spots to which they have wandered; little troops are gradually brought together, and collected, first in a large enclosure, then in a small one, the plucking-kraal, in which they are crowded together so closely, that the most savage bird has no room to make himself disagreeable.
Besides the gate through which the ostriches are driven into the kraal, there is an outlet at the opposite end, through the "plucking-box." This latter is a most useful invention, saving much time and trouble. It is a very solid wooden box, in which, though there is just room for an ostrich to stand, he cannot possibly turn round; nor can he kick, the sides of the box being too high. At each end there is a stout door; one opening inside, the other outside the kraal. Each bird in succession is dragged up to the first door, and, after more or less of a scuffle, is pushed in and the door slammed behind him. Then the two operators, standing one on each side of the box, have him completely in their power; and with a few rapid snips of their shears his splendid wings are soon denuded of their long white plumes. These, to prevent their tips from being spoilt, are always cut before the quills are ripe. The stumps of the latter are allowed to remain some two or three months longer, until they are so ripe that they can be pulled out—generally by the teeth of the Kaffirs—without hurting the bird. It is necessary to pull them; the feathers, which by their weight would have caused the stumps to fall out naturally at the right time, being gone. Some farmers, anxious to hurry on the next crop of feathers, are cruel enough to draw the stumps before they are ripe; but nature, as usual, resents the interference with her laws, and the feathers of birds which have been thus treated soon deteriorate. It is best to pluck only once a year. The tails, and the glossy black feathers on the bodies of the birds, having small quills, are not cut, but pulled out; this, everyone says, does not hurt the birds, but there is an unpleasant tearing sound about the operation, and I think it must make their eyes water.
After a plucking would come several very busy days of sorting and tying up the feathers in readiness for the market; for T——, whenever he could spare the time, preferred doing this work himself to employing the professional sorters in Port Elizabeth, who charge exorbitantly. During these few days everything had to give way to feathers, large piled-up masses of which crowded the rooms, till we seemed to be over head and ears in feathers. Feathers covered the floor and invaded every article of furniture, especially monopolizing the dining-table; and when, at all sorts of irregular hours, we grudgingly allowed ourselves time for rough, impromptu meals of cold or tinned meat, we picnicked among feathers. It was useless to attempt keeping the rooms either tidy or clean while sorting was going on; and we resigned ourselves to living for those two or three days in a state at which owners of neat English homes would shudder—indeed, those only who have seen the process of sorting can form any idea of the untidiness, the dust, the fluffs, and the sneezing. But they were pleasant days; and many an interesting book will always be associated in our minds with the sorting of ostrich-feathers; for, while T—— arranged prime whites, blacks, tails, feminas, chicken-feathers, etc., according to length, colour, and quality, I enlivened the monotony of his work by reading aloud.
Sometimes the white feathers would be dirty—for there is nothing an ostrich likes better than sitting down to cool himself in the muddiest dam he can find—then it was necessary to wash them, dip them into strong raw starch, and shake them in the hot sun, beating two bundles of them together till quite dry. The starch makes them look very pretty and fluffy; and young ladies in England who economically wash their own feathers would find it a great improvement. Ostrich-feathers are quite tabooed by ladies in South Africa; they are too common, every Kaffir or Hottentot wearing one in his dirty, battered hat.
If an ostrich-feather is held upright, its beautiful form—graceful as the frond-like branch of the cocoa-nut palm, which it somewhat resembles—is at once seen to be perfectly even and equal on both sides, its stem dividing it exactly in the centre; whereas the stems of other feathers are all more or less on one side. The ancient Egyptians, observant of this—as of everything in nature—chose the ostrich-feather as the sacred emblem of truth and justice, setting it upon the head of Thmei, goddess of truth.
After a good rain, ostriches soon begin to make nests; the males become very savage, and their note of defiance—brooming, as it is called by the Dutch—is heard in all directions. The bird inflates his neck in a cobra-like fashion, and gives utterance to three deep roars; the two first short and staccato, the third very prolonged. Lion-hunters all agree in asserting that the roar of the king of beasts and that of the most foolish of birds are identical in sound; with this difference only, that the latter, when near, resembles the former very far away. T——, when hunting in the interior, has often been deceived by the sound—expecting a lion, and finding only an ostrich.