What appetite you have."
Toto, although in general no coward, could never, after a severe kick he received on first coming to the farm, be brought to face a savage bird. Collies can, however, be made very useful in collecting and driving ostriches; and Mr. Evans, of Rietfontein, one of our neighbours, had several which were perfectly trained; working as well with the birds as their relatives in Scotland and Wales do with sheep.
A few of our birds were fenced off in breeding-camps; each pair having a run of about one hundred acres. One of these camps was directly opposite the house; and from the windows we could observe the regularity with which the two birds, sitting alternately on the eggs, came on and off at their fixed times. The cock always takes his place upon the nest at sundown, and sits through the night—his dark plumage making him much less conspicuous than the light-coloured hen; with his superior strength and courage, too, he is a better defender of the nest against midnight marauders. At nine in the morning, with unfailing punctuality, the hen comes to relieve him, and take up her position for the day. At the end of the six weeks of sitting, both birds, faithfully as the task has been shared between them, are in a very enfeebled state, and miserably poor and thin.
One undutiful hen—having apparently imbibed advanced notions—absolutely refused to sit at all; and the poor husband, determined not to be disappointed of his little family, did all the work himself; sitting bravely and patiently day and night, though nearly dead with exhaustion, till the chicks were hatched out. The next time this pair of birds had a nest, the cock's mind was firmly made up that he would stand no more nonsense. He fought the hen; giving her so severe a thrashing that she was all but killed—and this Petruchio-like treatment had the desired effect, for the wife never again rebelled, but sat submissively.
Very different from this couple were the Darby and Joan in the camp opposite our windows. One unlucky morning the hen, frightened by a Kaffir's dog, ran into the wire fence, and was so terribly injured that she had to be killed. For two years poor Darby was a disconsulate widower, and all attempts to find him a satisfactory second wife were unavailing; several hens, which, soon after his loss, were in succession placed in his camp, being only rescued in time, and at the tackey's point, from being kicked to death. The bare idea of there being anything pathetic about an ostrich seems absurd—and indeed this is the only instance I have known of anything of the kind—but it was truly pitiful to watch this poor bird, as, day after day, and nearly all day long, he wandered up and down, up and down, the length of his camp, in the hard, beaten track worn by his restless feet along the side of the fence.
When his time of mourning at length came to an end, and poor Joan's long-vacant place was filled, we at first rejoiced. But we soon doubted whether, after all, he had not been happier as a widower. For the new wife, a magnificent hen, considerably above the average size, had him in complete subjection; his spirit seemed quite broken, probably with long fretting, and he made no attempt to hold his own, but was for the rest of his days the most hen-pecked—or ought I to say hen-kicked?—of husbands. Some amount of stratagem was even necessary on my part, to ensure that he had enough to eat (this pair of birds, being near the house, were under my special care, and during droughts were daily fed by me); for every time he came near the food, the greedy hen would persistently drive him away, standing on tiptoe and hissing viciously at him—and I soon saw that it was useless to attempt feeding them together. But the poor, ill-used old bird and I were good friends, and quite understood one another; and at all sorts of odd times—watching for those golden opportunities when his tyrant was safely out of sight at the further end of the camp—he would come down to the fence and look out for me, and I would bring him a good feed of mealies.
As a father, Darby was no less devoted than he had formerly been as a husband; and to please him we allowed his chicks to remain with him, and set the whole family free to roam where they liked about the veldt; breaking through the usual rule, which is to take the little birds from the parents when two or three days old, and herd them near the house. For they never become as tame when brought up by the old ones as when accustomed from the first to human society. These poor little birds, I am sorry to say, did not flourish under parental guardianship; indeed, it was not long before they were all dead. For their well-meaning, but over-zealous father, apparently thinking no veldt good enough for them, kept them continually on the move; and, in his perpetual search for "fresh woods and pastures new," took them such long distances that he literally walked them as well as himself to death. Not many days after the last chick's departure, Darby's own poor body, worn to a skeleton by these restless wanderings, following on six weeks of incubation, was found on the veldt.
When, as sometimes happens, one solitary chick is reared at the house, it becomes absurdly and often inconveniently tame. A friend of ours, on returning to his farm at the end of a severe thunderstorm, found that an ostrich's nest had been washed away. Some of the eggs were rescued from the water, and—being of course deserted by the parents—were placed in an incubator, where, contrary to all expectations, one chick came out. This bird, Jackie, became the tamest and most audacious of pets; and, like many another spoilt only child, was often a terrible nuisance. All the little niggers about the place had a lively dread of him; and he requisitioned their food in the boldest manner. As they sat on the ground at meals, with plates of boiled pumpkin and rice in their laps, he would come up, and, stretching his snake-like neck over their heads, or insinuating it under their arms, would coolly help himself to the contents of one plate after another. Occasionally he would make for the unhappy youngsters in so menacing a manner as to frighten them into dropping their plates altogether; then, while his victims ran away crying, he would squat on his heels among the débris, and regale his enormous appetite at leisure.
But one day retribution came. Being free of the kitchen—simply because no one could keep him out—he was not long in observing that the pumpkin and rice always came out of one particular pot; and, the idea suddenly occurring to him that he could do no better than go straight to the fountain-head for his favourite dish, he walked up, full of joyful anticipation, to the fire where this pot was bubbling. The cook—who, being mother to several of the ill-used children, did not love Jackie—offered no friendly interference to save him from his fate; and, plunging his bill into the pot, he greedily scooped up, and, with the lightning-like rapidity of ostriches, tossed down his throat, a large mouthful of boiling rice. Poor fellow! the next moment he was dancing round the kitchen, writhing with agony, shaking his head nearly off, and twisting his neck as if bent on tying it in a knot. Finally he dashed wildly from the house; the cook, avenged at last for all the dinners he had devoured, called after him as he stumbled out at the door, "Serve you right, Jackie!"—and away he fled across the veldt, till the last that was seen of him was a little cloud of white dust vanishing on the horizon. He returned a sadder and a wiser bird; and it was long before he again ventured inside the kitchen.
When about a year old, Jackie was sold to a farmer who had long coveted him; and who, no doubt, soon repented of his purchase. He was now sufficiently strong to give a good hard kick; and, being a more daring freebooter than ever, and no respecter of persons, he would march up and attack any one he saw carrying food, or what he thought might be food; endeavouring, by a well-aimed blow, to strike it out of their hands; his evil design generally succeeding. At length his master, tired of hearing constant complaints of his conduct, and impatient of his perpetual intrusion indoors, tried putting him into a camp. There, however, he obstinately refused to remain. As soon as he was put in, he would squat down, laying his head and neck on the ground; then, making himself as flat as possible, he would "squirm" out, not without some difficulty, under the lowest wire of the fence. It was impossible to keep him in; and he was left to his own devices, calmly regarded as a necessary evil, and allowed to be as great a nuisance as he liked.