Last summer, when I was out in the country, I made the acquaintance
of a kind-hearted little bantam rooster, who was as funny as he was
kind-hearted.
An old speckled hen, who looked as if she might be a good mother, but
wasn't, had brought up a family of chickens to that stage where their
legs had grown long and their down all turned to pin-feathers.
Very ugly they were; there was no doubt of it. Perhaps this queer
mother thought so. At any rate, she turned the poor things adrift and
pecked them cruelly whenever they came near her.
Little "Banty" saw this unkind behavior. He was small, but his heart
was big, and he set Madam Speckle an example which ought to have made
her hide her head in the darkest corner of the hen-house for shame.
He adopted those chickens!
Each one of them was about half the size of "Banty," and to see that
loving little father-bird standing on tiptoe with his wings spread,
trying in vain to cover all eight of his adopted children, was a
pathetic as well as a ludicrous sight.
They loved him and believed in him fully. They followed him all day
long, and seemed to see nothing amusing when he choked down a crow to
cluck over the food he found for them, and at night they quarreled over
the privilege of being nearest to him.
I think bantams perhaps are more interesting than other fowls. When I
was a little girl father brought three of them home. Dandy and his two
little wives were all pure white and very small.
We had other fowls, the aristocratic Spanish kind, each as large as two
or three of Dandy, and the Spanish rooster hinted very strongly that
Dandy's presence in that barnyard could be dispensed with. But Dandy
was a brave little fighter, and he soon settled it once for all with
Grandee as to what the rights of the former and his family were.
In a month or so one of the little hens was missing. After a long time
we found her, and in such a queer, cozy place! Upon the foundations
of the old red farmhouse where we lived, rested great squared beams.
An end of one of these beams had decayed, out of sight, under the
clapboards on the south side of the house, until there was a large,
soft-lined hollow. Here the little hen had stolen her nest, and when
we found her she was just ready to lead off twenty-one tiny white
fluff-balls of chickens, every egg having hatched.
Dandy's bravery saved his little life one day, and made him forever
famous in the annals of our pets. On this most eventful day of his
life, a shadow flitted over the barnyard, and a wail went up from us
children as a chicken-hawk swooped down upon our beloved Dandy and
carried him off before our indignant and tearful eyes.
Up they went! But in a moment or two we saw that the thief was having
trouble, as somehow Dandy had managed to turn in those wicked talons,
and the little fellow was using his sharp beak and spurs with all his
might.
The battle was brief, and then Dandy dropped at our feet. He was
bleeding and had lost the sight of one of his eyes, but otherwise
he was little hurt. All the rest of his days Dandy carried himself
proudly, as one who has been tried as a hero and not found wanting.
May H. Prentice.
[Illustration: BUFFLE-HEAD.
(Charitonetta albeola.)
Nearly 1/2 Life-size.
FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.
COPYRIGHT 1900, BY
A. W. MUMFORD, CHICAGO.]