CHAPTER XVISUKEY AND HERFOSTER-PIGEON
The winter after Sukey went up to the farm I had some anxiety about her. She had a poor digestion; she always was a small eater, and she seemed to feel the cold of the unusually severe winter we had. Every bitter night she had a copper foot-warmer to sit on, and I would often get up before daylight and give her something to eat. One peculiarity that she has is that she eats by artificial light, a thing that most pigeons will not do. She has always been accustomed to an eleven o’clock supper. She goes to bed at dark, but at eleven, when I enter the room with a lamp, shewakes up, stretches herself, greets me with an amiable “rookety cahoo!” then lets me lift her down to her seed-box, where she eats with the lamp close to her, runs her pink tongue over her lump of rock-salt, drinks heartily, and goes back to her perch.
I do not recommend this supper, except in the case of very delicate or sick birds. Sukey has been so frail that I have often found her almost dead from exhaustion, and she will not eat the different grains that other pigeons eat. She confines herself to rice, millet, and hemp.
When spring came she was much stronger, and I played an amusing trick on her. When she made a nest and laid eggs I went one day to the pigeon-loft outside, where my pet Tweedledum, a daughter of the bird that had come from England, had a nest. I pushed Tweedledum aside, saw that one of her eggs had just broken and a squab lay inside. I took the squab inside his egg-shell and went back to the house. Concealing what I carried I went up to Sukey and told her to go for a walk. This she was very happy to do, and while she was gone I took one of her warm eggs from the nest and put the young squab and his shell inside. Soon she returned, stopped short, and stared at the nest as if to say, “Is it possible that an egg of mine has hatched out at last?”
Then, as if her suspicions were aroused, she turned to me with a dreadful stare of inquiry. I did not dare to laugh. It seems to me that shehas grown so intelligent that she knows when I am laughing at her. I nodded my head as if to say, “Yes, it is your own pidgie,” then I pushed her on the nest.
She stepped very carefully over the little bird—it is wonderful to see the pains a mother bird takes not to injure little ones—she settled down over it. It was adopted. I was delighted. Now I would see what kind of a mother she would make. She sat on it steadily day after day, but to my amusement, for I had not reckoned on this, she started to feed it whole seeds from her crop.
She knew how to take its little beak in her own, this pigeon that had never associated with her kind; but of course she would have killed it with her whole seeds, so, as a punishment for the trick I had played on her, I had the task of feeding Sukey before she fed the squab. This I did by slipping pills of bread and rolled oats down her throat. To my further amusement the role of motherhood soon bored her. She did not really love birds, and she got tired of this squab as soon as he left the nest.
She is a slight creature, and this stout young homer with his big flapping wings, and his hoarse and piercing cries for food worried her and upset her usual calm. She ran from him, and we were often convulsed with laughter at the sight of Sukey fleeing from her adopted baby. I always had to catch him and feed him, and then he would go and squat down beside her and behave himself.
We called him Whistler, from his shrill cries after Sukey, and after a few weeks I again visited Tweedledum’s nest and took out of it the squab I had left. I wanted to compare it with Whistler, to see the difference between the one I had brought up and the one the mother had raised.
I found that mine was slightly smaller than hers, but was much more mature—it had a wiser eye, and acted more like a grown-up bird. Hers was more fluffy and was, of course, very shy. It snapped its bill at us and kept in a corner. Sukey began to beat it, so I hurried it back to Tweedledum.
When Whistler grew older he made his way out to the front and side of the house, where we had hammocks and tables, and always afternoon tea. Sukey, of course, came with him, and it was amusing to see these two birds perched on the hammock ropes while the four dogs lay underneath and the family sat about, reading and talking. In the distance were cats, hens, pigeons, sparrows, wild birds, calves, and pigs wandering about the farmyard and orchard.
If we all went into the house or disappeared about the farm, Sukey and Whistler would either follow us, or would go to the doors and wait for some one to let them in. I have often smiled to see baby Whistler all alone—such a tiny pigeon—standing patiently by the big hall door. Sukey would trot after us away down to the river, but he did not care as much for walking as she did.
They were never supposed to be left a minute alone out of doors, on account of the hawks, but sometimes we forgot them. One day we had been interested in the packing of some fine Siberian crabapples from a tree down by the road. All the family, including Sukey, had been there. When the dinner-bell rang we came back to the house, and not until we were at the table did I remember Sukey. I sprang up and rushed to the crabapple tree. She was not there. She had been sitting on a post, an easy mark for a keen-eyed hawk.
I ran back to the house, intending to ask the family to join me in a search for our especial pet, but it was not necessary. There, on the kitchen veranda, sat the little hooded creature patiently waiting for the door to be opened. After we left her she had trotted up the short avenue after us, and had taken her station there.
“Sukey,” I said, as I caught her up, “I was afraid that the hawks had caught you.”
“Oh, rookety cahoo!” she replied consolingly, “rookety cahoo!”
When I sold my farm and went back to the city I could not make up my mind to take the homers with me. They had enjoyed themselves so hugely in the country that I resolved to leave them. City life would mean confinement; for these farm-hatched birds, if let loose in Halifax, would endeavor to return to the farm.
I took only four pigeons back with me, Sukey,Whistler, Crippie, and Owlie. Poor Owlie died of some mysterious disease, and Crippie in his black tumbler suit, seems to mourn constantly and sincerely for her.
Whistler, I am sorry to say, after his return to the city, developed into a confirmed pugilist, and some one had to take time to fight with him every day. Bracing his two red feet firmly he would close his eyes, grunt vigorously, keep a tight hold on the finger that had been extended to him, and jerk convulsively like a dog that has hold of another dog’s throat. His pinches and twists were so scientific that at last we wore gloves while contesting with him. After getting pretty well warmed up he would vary the twisting process by giving hard slaps with his wings.
Two years ago I was going away from home for a few months, and begged my father to have the care of entertaining Whistler, for his beatings were too severe for my mother. My father obligingly consented, and every day while I was gone put on a pair of gloves and went into the aviary to let Whistler fight him.
The bird, at this time, used to sit the most of the time by the aviary door, waiting for us to come and amuse him. His upbringing with Sukey had unfitted him for pigeon society, and if he had not been so rough I would have allowed him to come upstairs with her.
She was shocked and disgusted by his bullyingways, and would have nothing to do with him. He deteriorated until he became dangerous, and one day this last summer when I went into the aviary I taxed him with the disappearance of Crippie, my beloved lame tumbler.
He, of course, gave me no satisfaction, and after a time I discovered my poor cripple creeping from under a tree with a battered and bleeding head, and one eye closed. I washed and dressed his wounds, and took Whistler upstairs to my room. “You are a very bad bird,” I said, “I don’t know what I am going to do with you.” He strutted and cooed and gurgled with glee, and walked round and round me. This was just what he wanted—to come upstairs with me.
“Go into that closet, you wicked pigeon,” I went on, “and sleep there.” This was still better fun. He walked into the closet, found some rubbers there, and began to talk to them. “At last you have some safe playmates,” I went on, “you may beat them as much as you like.”
There were two storm rubbers and two sandals, and as the days went by I saw that Whistler really considered them some new kind of pigeons. He bowed politely to them, pushed them about with his beak, talked to them, and one day I took an egg of Sukey’s, made a nest, and put it in the closet with a sandal on top of it. Then I called Whistler, who looked delighted with this new arrangement. He gave an agreeable nod to the sandal, gentlymoved it aside with his beak, and stepping on the nest, sat all night beside the egg.
Of course I did not keep him in the closet all the time. He spent a good deal of time with me, in no danger of being trodden on, for I have been so much with birds that I have developed a shuffling gait in order to avoid stepping on them.
Every morning I put him out on the roof-veranda, but he was never allowed to be alone with Sukey. If I left him I got some other member of the family to watch him. He behaved himself as long as we were present, but if left alone with her would seize her by the long neck feathers and wipe the floor with her. Sukey, who had continued developing, was now far beyond him. She abhorred this barbaric conduct, and more than ever before fled from him in terror.
She had now gone in for scientific nest-making, and her materials were more and more peculiar. One of the last I pulled to pieces consisted of assorted sizes of hairpins, a black-headed pin, a half-burnt match, a withered mayflower, a feather from an indigo bunting’s wing, and some little sticks of different shapes. I saw her one day tossing my mother’s spectacles up in the air, as if deliberating whether to put them in the nest or not. Finally she threw them on the floor.
Another thing that she did not throw on the floor, but put in the nest, was a garnet finger-ring that she stole from my dressing-table. I took it out, but itsoon afterward disappeared. However, if Sukey lost it she did it unintentionally, for the nest would be its destination.
In addition to varying the materials she chose different and safer places for her nests. An old fur cloak, folded up on the telephone-table is a favorite spot. Last summer she sat there a great deal of the time, and did not object strongly to any member of the family using the telephone, but growled ominously when a stranger approached. One day I heard a man plead with her not to grumble at him.
Always of a jealous disposition, she has become more sensitive as to any attention bestowed on other birds. She will leave her food at any time to fly to me, and protest vigorously if she hears me petting another bird. If I am feeding a young one she flies right on it, jabbering excitedly, and tries to wean my attention from it to herself. She does not like us to notice any other creature, and some time ago she gave an exhibition of what we thought was jealousy of a dog.
She had been sitting on two eggs, and my mother one day took them from her. Sukey eyed her strangely as she did so, for to have any person but myself take her eggs was an exceptional thing. After my mother left the room Sukey followed her, and I followed Sukey. My mother had disappeared, but Sukey pressed right on to her bedroom, and flew to the arm of a rocking-chair. There she satgazing pensively at my mother’s little dog Billy, who lay in a chair by the bed.
“What are you doing in here, Sukey?” I asked, “you never come in this room. Come back to your own.”
I tookherthere, but she would not stay, and once again I followed her to my mother’s room, where she sat staring at Billy.
I told the family of the occurrence, and we concluded that it was possible that Sukey had, in pigeon fashion, reasoned that my mother had stolen her eggs to put them under her own pet—the dog.
Sukey did not dare to beat him, although the dog always treated her with the greatest consideration. She never hesitates to beat birds smaller than herself if she gets angry with them or with me. Sometimes when I am reading or sewing she caresses me until she gets tired, then puts her head down for me to rub it. If I am too much absorbed to do so, she beats me. Then I push her from me. Her eyes sparkle, she goes round and round on the floor, saying angrily, “rookety cahoo!” then darts at the nearest bird, usually an unoffending white dove that loves to be near her. The little dove’s feathers fly until I spring up, rescue her, pick the white down from Sukey’s bill, and apologize for my inattention. In these fits of rage she reminds me of children who do not dare to strike their parents, and who attack some one smaller than themselves.
A curious trait in this pet pigeon of mine is hersensitiveness to any change in my dress. At first I could not believe that she distinguished colors, and knew an old gown from a new one, but at last I became fully convinced of it.
Pigeons wear the same gown all the time. They do not moult into different colors, and Sukey does not like me to do so. When I moult into a new hat or a new gown she is either in a fright or a rage. If the former, she holds herself erect, packs her feathers and becomes slim, and grunts like an Indian several times—“Ugh, ugh, ugh!”
One can never mistake the pigeon sound of fright. If she is merely angry she flies on the hat, bites it, scolds incessantly, and shows her displeasure with me by talking rapidly. In the case of a dress she trots round and round me on the floor, biting the hem in displeasure. I have been amused with the curious way in which she dissociates my hands from my head. Some time ago I found out that she considers my hands aliens and enemies. She loves my head, but when she is caressing it the unkind hands often lift her away. So she spends hours in fighting them, and sometimes as I sit reading with her on my lap, I have to hide my hands or she bites them till they are sore.