CHAPTER XVIIMINNIE POST-OFFICE
During the six years that I have had Sukey she has spent all her winters, except the one on the farm, in her warm, furnace-heated room upstairs. Last winter I became worried about her throat, and had our family doctor examine it and prescribe for her. He gave her tincture of iron, and for a long time she had her little bottle of medicine and her tiny spoon and dropper.
I had been in the habit of keeping a few other delicate birds upstairs with her, but finding that the inhabitants of the lower aviary did not get sore throats, nor very dried-up claws, I decided thatSukey had been kept too warm, and resolved to put her and all my other birds downstairs.
If I had been at home it would have been a very difficult matter to keep her there. However, I was coming away, and I could not bring her with me, so a week before I left I carried my pet bird down to the inhospitable room in which she had been thrown from her nest as a baby, and told her she must stay there.
She ran after me to the wire door and begged to come out. I told her that the imprisonment was for her good. Her health would probably improve, and she would become less abnormal. I had been educating her out of her sphere.
She is not the kind of bird to die of grief, but she did not like my plan for her. She placed herself on a stone ledge by the door and sat there night and day, except when eating and drinking. I fastened a little box against the wall for her to sit on, and left strict injunctions with the maid who was to take care of her that if she fretted she was to be taken upstairs.
She does not fret. She eats and drinks and sits on her box, but all the time she is listening for me. When she hears any one coming in the basement she calls out, hoping that I am returning.
She is receiving a great deal of petting from my parents, and the maid writes that occasionally my pet bird lights on her shoulder. However, I know that no one can take my place with my pigeon. Sheis as faithful as a dog, and bird-lovers will understand how eagerly I look forward to a reunion with her. It would be unwise to project into her the emotional qualities of a human being. She is not suffering, she is only waiting, but it is something to be able to wait in the days of a fickle and restless generation.
Poor Whistler too is waiting, but I cannot feel the same sympathy for him that I do for my Princess, and I smile whenever I think of him. He, for the winter, is alone in the cage that was built for my owl. It is a good size, and he is high-stepping round it and talking incessantly to a pigeon that I got in rather a curious way.
One day last summer one of the numerous boys who bring me birds, rang the bell, and announced that a new pet was approaching.
I tried not to laugh when I found that my new pet’s carriage was a steam roller. The big, dirty, noisy thing was drawn up near the house. A man black as the roller, from his contact with the coal, was coming toward the door, and in his hand he held a sooty pigeon.
“It is from the post-office,” he said; “I was taking the roller by, and frightened two pigeons so that they fell from their nest. One went among the market women, and I don’t know what became of it. This fellow lighted on my box, and though the boys begged for it, I shut it up and brought it to you.”
The post-office is about a mile from our house.I thanked him for his kindness to the bird, and invited him upstairs to see its new home. He followed me to the roof-veranda, and I examined the bird. One squawk that it gave, and its size, proclaimed it to be young, just ready to leave the nest.
“I will feed it for a day or two,” I said, “then let it go.”
He thanked me and went away, and I fed that pigeon from the last day of July till the last day of September.
“What is the matter with it?” I asked, “is it bewitched? Its capacity for food seems endless.”
I never had fed a pigeon for so long a time, but Minnie Post-office, as we named her, did not seem able to get a morsel to stay in her bill.
If I did not feed her she would peck at seeds, but they rolled right out of her mouth. For several weeks my brother-in-law assisted me in feeding her, as I had a number of other birds that no one but myself could care for. Three times a day her dish of water, her box of pills, and her feeding bib were brought out. She was a wild pigeon, and in order to keep her still during meal-time we had to put a cloth around her shoulders.
When my brother-in-law had to return to his university, and October approached, I put Minnie downstairs in the aviary.
“I am very sorry,” I said to her, “but I can feed you no longer. If you can’t pick up food for yourself, you will have to starve or be poisoned.”
Itried her for a few days. Her crop always seemed empty, but she lived; and, to my delight, Whistler struck up a friendship with her. I put a box close to the wire netting of his cage, and he stood on a box inside, and Minnie stood on the one outside, and they talked to each other all day long.
One day I put her inside his cage, but she was frightened, and he did not care half as much for the attainable as for the unattainable. When I separated them they went on billing and cooing, and I know are at it yet.
It is an excellent way for her to spend her time. Birds must have something to take up their attention or they mope to death. I know that my gentle Crippie stirs Sukey up occasionally and makes her trot about the ground enough to give her exercise.
One other pigeon I have in my aviary—the Tramp—that a little boy brought to me a week or two before I left home.
“I found this bird in a field,” he said; “I guess his wing is broken.”
The wing was not broken. I kept the bird by himself for some time, and decided that he was half-starved and deadly weary. He had started to moult, and his poor jagged feathers had not been able to carry him more than a few feet from the ground. I put him in with the others, and left him eating and drinking and meditating. I hope he will not put on flesh and beat his fellows before I return.
When I get on the subject of pigeons it is difficultfor me to stop talking. I shall be pleased if I have convinced any doubters that they are really intelligent birds, and the ones most suitable for domestication. Any one can keep a few by giving them a room or a part of a room in an attic and allowing them to fly in and out through an open window.
One thing I am firmly convinced of—pigeons should always be under supervision. Bird-lovers are not apt to be annoyed by them, but non-bird-lovers often complain, and justly complain, of unwished-for birds that come and make untidy nests and disfigure their buildings. Every city should maintain pigeon-lofts. There should be, in a few exposed places, rooms where they can go in and lay eggs in boxes prepared for them. The cost would be trifling, and one would have the squabs to dispose of.
I have educated myself into laying sentiment aside. Pigeons should not be allowed to increase indefinitely, nor should large flocks be fed all summer and be allowed to starve all winter. They should be regulated. Every summer a certain number of squabs should be mercifully killed.
I managed in this way on my farm: Each pair of birds had two large nesting-boxes. When their first pair of squabs was ready to leave the nest they were just suitable for the market. I gently lifted them out and delivered them over to one of the men about the farm. The little creatures had had a happy life. They had an instantaneous death. Theparents, taken up with the second nest, never resented the removal of the first pair of squabs. Whereas, if I had kept taking their eggs from them, they would have become uneasy, and would have tried to find a safe place to build.
It would have been cruel to keep all my squabs. Few farmers wanted them. I could not feed a large number, and I decided that the right way was to kill them, though that one thing—the necessity of taking life would easily have destroyed my pleasure in farm life, if I had allowed it to do so.
One thing I have discovered about them, making them more suitable than any other birds for pets, is that they do not mind careful handling. My pigeons climb about me like pups, and they are the only birds I have that do not object when a hand is laid over their wings. All my other tame birds will light on my shoulder or hand, allow me to talk to them, but would be overcome with uneasiness if I put my hand over their only means of escape from an enemy—their wings.
My pigeons go to sleep on my lap, and let me fondle them as much as I choose. Indeed, I should say from what I know of them, that a pigeon that has once formed an attachment for a human being, will never entirely go back to pigeon society.