SUKEY AND HER FOSTER-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, she wakes 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
she has 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 bullying ways, 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, gently moved 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 it soon 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 sat gazing 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 took her there, 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 her sensitiveness 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.
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