PRINCESS SUKEY
The little kingdom of Belgium waxes most enthusiastic over pigeons.
This is the great breeding center, this is the real home of the modern,
thoroughbred homer. Pigeon-flying is the national pastime. One-fifth of
the entire population are active fanciers, and their wonderful birds
are sent away in such numbers that special trains are made up for them.
Why should it not be a national sport in America? One can think of no
class of persons who would not be benefited by taking an interest in
these most lovable and intelligent of birds. I have proved by my own
experience that it is a delightful relief to turn from the strenuous
fatigue of a modern day’s work to the quiet of a pigeon-loft. Here are
hard workers, but they are quiet, calm, reposeful.
Some famous trips have been made by American birds, though, as the
number of lofts increases, the tendency is not to fatigue birds by too
long a journey. Five hundred mile one-day records are made, but they
are not very frequent. Homers can, however, fly much farther than five
hundred miles. One owned by Mr. Samuel Hunter, of Fall River, Mass.,
flew home from Montgomery, Ala., a distance of over one thousand miles,
and two homing pigeons lately arrived in their loft in Boston, Mass.,
greatly exhausted by a trip from Minneapolis. They had flown about
twelve hundred miles.
Homers are especially valuable for physicians with a large country
practice. They are faithful and trustworthy medical messengers. The
doctor leaves a pigeon with a sick patient. In a few hours it can be
released and will return to its physician-owner with the latest account
of the condition of his patient.
One medical man relates in a book about pigeons a charming story of
a child patient who was ill with fever. The doctor had left, and
the child sat with his arm around the basket containing the pigeon
messenger, who was quietly waiting till the time came for him to be
sent to report the boy’s condition to his master.
The mother, to interest her child, related the story of the dove that
Noah sent from the ark. To her delight the bird in the story and the
bird in the basket combined to soothe the child, who presently fell
asleep with a smile on his weary face. He was better, and the birds had
helped him.
While pigeons are excellent pets, and a means of relaxation for weary
persons, I hold that of all classes to be benefited by their study
and care I would put first boys and girls. Taking care of pigeons is
easy work. They are hardy creatures, and books as to their management
can be easily obtained. Nothing keeps a boy out of mischief like a
loft of pigeons. Let him have homers by all means, rather than the
elegant fancy pigeon monstrosities that care to do little but strut
about a loft. Let him train his birds and have his traveling-basket to
send them on railway journeys. Arrangements can be made with railway
officials to release them at a given point.
The latest news that I can get of homing pigeons is from the Paris
correspondence of the London “Standard.”
It seems that the French authorities in the African Congo district have
had some trouble in communicating with each other. They could not keep
up a telegraph system, for mischievous natives delighted in cutting
down telegraph poles, and in using them for firewood. Wild elephants
also amused themselves by uprooting one pole after another. Wireless
telegraphy could not be practised on account of the tropical atmosphere
often charged with electricity, and generally saturated with moisture.
What was the French government to do? A pigeon post was suggested,
and they started with a main pigeon depot of one hundred birds at
Brazzaville, and will have a chain of stations at a distance of about
twenty-five miles. The chances of a bird being killed or going astray
are put down at two per cent., so that a message sent over a hundred
miles by four pigeons would have ninety-two chances out of a hundred of
reaching its destination. A message of extra importance would be sent
in duplicate by two birds. Besides the use of these pigeons for regular
postal service, it is planned that travelers, explorers, and military
scouts will also carry a few.
One other item of interest about homers I find in a late newspaper: A
bird was released from a balloon over Dover, Vt., eight thousand five
hundred feet in the air, and above the clouds. The earth was invisible,
but the homer in a short time arrived safely at its Fall River cote.
Now, after all my praise of the hard-working, clean-shaped homing
pigeon, I must make the confession that the favorite bird in my
aviary--the one that I am perhaps foolishly fond of, is not a homer,
but a monstrosity. However, there is a reason for my fondness for her,
and I will relate the peculiar circumstances that endeared her to me.
I had obtained a pair of ruffed, elegant jacobins, and they had settled
down in the box of straw I gave them, and had hatched two tiny squabs.
One morning later I found one of these squabs a short distance from
the nest. I picked it up and examined it. It had one deformed wing,
and had either perished in the nest, or had been gently lifted out to
die on the bare ground. I suspect the latter explanation was correct,
for the next morning on going into the aviary I found the other squab
on the ground. It was opening and shutting its beak painfully, and was
evidently just gasping its last. I ran to the furnace-room and laid its
cold body on the warm iron.
Then I examined it. There was nothing in its crop, and its little
yellow, languishing body was thin and miserable. I took it upstairs,
wrapped it up, and put it on a hot water bag, then gave it some bread
and milk. The only way I could get the little exhausted creature to eat
was by putting its feeble beak to my mouth and letting it take the food
from between my half-closed teeth.
When night came I was puzzled to know what to do with it. I did not
seem to realize the finality of the parent birds’ act in putting a
young one out of the nest, and carefully arranging a cloth nest on a
hot water bag, so that it would not die of cold, even if the mother
refused to sit on it, I took it down to the aviary and put it with its
parents.
Of course, they did not go near it, and in the morning I found my
pigeon again apparently drawing its last breath. I hurried it upstairs,
and it did not go down again. I made it a bed in a little basket, and
kept it near me night and day. It was powerfully ugly, and the family
teased me a good deal about my pigeon, but I told them I had made a vow
to save its life. I tried a good many experiments in feeding it, and
very often in the middle of the night I would spring up and look at the
basket to see if the little delicate creature were still alive.
Later on I learned how to bring up young pigeons successfully, but this
one I almost killed by giving wrong food to it. I found later that
a mixture of rolled oats, bread crumbs, and a few drops of milk and
water--the whole made very fine and soft, agreed well with it. I got
a medicine-dropper and a syringe, but for some time it would only eat
from between my teeth or my fingers, this being the nearest approach
to the parents’ beak. After a while I made different kinds of grain
and seeds into pills and slipped them down its throat. The bird soon
became very tame, and would flap its wings and scream for food whenever
it saw me. It was dubbed Princess Sukey by my sister, but for some
time she was a ridiculous looking princess. I found she had a form
of indigestion, and as she has had this ever since, I fancy that her
parents, discovering this, had made up their minds that she was not
worth bringing up.
A curious thing happened as soon as she opened her eyes. The young
pigeons in the aviary always hissed at human beings who went near them.
Princess Sukey, on account of her upbringing, looked upon human beings
as her friends, and when I showed her a bird for the first time, she
rose up in her nest, clapped her beak, and hissed in terror.
She hated birds, and has hated them ever since. One day, when she was
a plump young pigeon, her father walked up to her, bowing and scraping
as polite pigeons do. I was greatly amused to see Sukey take him by the
long neck feathers and give him a good shaking. She had made up her
pigeon mind to give birds the go-by and join her lot with me and my
family, for she liked all of us, though I was her chief favorite, as I
represented her food supply.
This father of hers was rather an inconstant bird. Once, when his own
mate was very much in need of his services to help her in bringing
up young ones, he left her to play with a lively, attractive pigeon,
called Fanny Fantail. This Fanny was a bird without a mate, and a
lonely male or female pigeon, or any other kind of bird, makes more
trouble in an aviary than half a dozen pairs. I had to separate her
from the jacobin before he would go back to his own nest.
For months Sukey was one of the ugliest birds that I ever saw. She
had a long, poor crop of feathers on her body, but her big hood did
not develop until she was full-grown. Her bare neck, ugly head, and
yellowish eyes, made her a kind of laughing-stock, but soon there was
a transformation. The blue blood in her told, and when her lovely red
and white feathers did start, she was a beauty. It was the story of the
ugly duckling over again. Her superb indifference to birds amused us
greatly. Through the summer she followed me about the roof-veranda, sat
in my room with me, or waited patiently for me if I went out. During
my absence she would sometimes attach herself to some other member of
the family. She was very fond of playing with me. She would sit on
my shoulder, and run her beak over my ear and cheek; and if I were
reading, she would peck the leaves of my book. If I sewed, she caught
my thread and sometimes so bothered me that I would put her out of the
room and shut the door. Then she was in distress, and would trot up and
down the window ledge outside, tapping the glass with her beak, and
pleading eloquently to be allowed in again.
The veranda was alive with birds, but she paid no attention to them,
unless one of them came near her, to have a sly peep in the tiny
mirror on the window ledge. Any such presuming bird, if she could
catch it, she would beat thoroughly. She had no curiosity about new
things, except human beings. One day I placed her in front of a horned
toad, and my sister took her photograph. She seemed to be looking
intelligently and inquiringly at it, but in reality I don’t think she
cared in the least about it.
These horned toads are really lizards, and in California we used to
keep them in our rooms. Their most remarkable habit is that of ejecting
blood from their eyes. My sister once saw a toad that was being teased
spurt blood from its eyes. After exercising this power the toad often
becomes limp and exhausted.
The Mexicans call them “sacred toads,” because they weep these tears
of blood. It is thought that this discharge of blood is a means of
protection. When worried by a superior animal, the little toad can
partly blind his enemy by shooting blood in his eye; and while the
enemy is recovering from the pain, which the blood seems to cause him,
the toad can make his escape.
The creature was not afraid of Sukey, and I never saw him shoot blood
from his eyes while with us. Unfortunately he was stepped on and died.
Before Sukey was a year old she had a trying illness, brought on by a
too rich diet and too much dancing.
One of my brothers had been with us for the Christmas holidays, and had
brought his little girl with him. It amused us to see Sukey dance, so
we used to blow lightly on her feet, and she would spin round and round
for us. After a while her feet became purple and inflamed, and she went
lame.
I put her in a basket, covered her up carefully, and took her to our
kind family physician. He gave me an antiseptic wash, helped me bathe
her claws and tie them up, for by this time they were very sore, and
had turned black.
Sukey took this affliction so much to heart that she moped and would
not eat. I had no intention of losing her, so I made pills of seeds and
rolled oats and slipped them down her throat. In a short time she got
well, but unfortunately lost two of the claws on one of her red feet. I
cut short her supply of hemp seeds, for I had been too indulgent in the
past. It is strange what a passion almost every bird has for this oily,
rich seed. Even birds too small to crack it will eat voraciously of it
when it is crushed.
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