The Adventures of a Suburbanite

At the word “chickens” Isobel would look at me reproachfully, and I would end meekly: “About chickens, as I was saying. Don’t you think we could have a pair of broilers to-morrow?”

As a matter of fact, this happened so often that I began to hate the sight of a broiled chicken, and was forced to mention roast chicken once in a while. It was after one of these times that the event happened that stirred all Westcote.

I had reached a point where I dodged Mr. Rolfs and Mr. Millington when I saw them, in order to avoid their insistent clamour for chickens, when one evening Isobel met me at the door with a smile.

“John!” she cried. “What do you think! Our chicken laid an egg!”

“Chicken?” I asked anxiously. “Did you say chicken?”

“And I am going to give you the egg for dinner,” cried Isobel joyfully. “Just think, John! Our own egg, laid by our own chicken! Do you want it fried, or boiled, or scrambled?”

“Isobel,” I demanded, “what is the meaning of all this?”

“I just could not kill the hen,” Isobel ran on, “after it had been so – so friendly. Could I? I felt as if I would be killing one of the family.”

“People do get to feeling that way about chickens when they keep them,” I said insinuatingly. “Why, Isobel, I have known wives to love chickens so warmly – wives that had never cared a snap for chickens before – wives that hated chickens – and they grew to love chickens so well that as soon as the coop was made – of course it was a nice, clean, airy coop, Isobel – and the dear little fluffy chicks began to peep about – ”

Isobel stiffened.

“John,” she said finally “you are not going to keep chickens!”

“Certainly not!” I agreed hastily.

“But of course we can’t kill Spotty,” said Isobel. “I call her Spotty because that seems such a perfect name for her. I telephoned for a roaster this morning, because you suggested having a roaster for dinner, John, and when the roaster came it was a live chicken! Imagine!”

“Horrors!” I exclaimed.

“I should think so!” agreed Isobel. “So there was nothing to do but ‘phone the grocer to come and get the live roaster, but when I ‘phoned, his grandmother was much worse, and the store was closed until she got better – or worse – and I couldn’t bear to see the poor thing in the basket with its legs tied all that time, for there is no telling how long an old person like a grandmother will remain in the same condition, so I loosened the roaster in the cellar, and at a quarter past four I heard it cluck. It had laid an egg. I knew that the moment I heard it cluck.”

“Isobel,” I said, “you were born to be the wife of a chicken fancier! You shall eat that egg!”

“No, John,” she said, “you shall eat it. It is our first real egg, laid by our dear little Spotty, and you shall eat it.”

“No, Isobel,” I began, and then, as I saw how determined she was, I compromised. “Let us have the egg scrambled,” I said, “and each of us eat a part.”

“Very well,” said Isobel, “if you will promise not to kill Spotty. We will keep her forever and forever!”

I agreed. Isobel kissed me for that.

After we had eaten the egg – and both Isobel and I agreed that it was really a superior egg – we went down cellar and looked at Spotty. I should say she was a very intelligent-looking hen, but homely. There was nothing flashy about her. She was the kind of hen a man might enter in the Sweepstakes class, and not get a prize, and then enter in the Consolation class and not get a prize, and then enter for the Booby prize and still be outclassed, and then enter in the Plain Old Barnyard Fowl class and not get within ten miles of a prize, and then be taken to the butcher as a Boarding House Broiler, and be refused on account of age, tough looks, and emaciation.

She was no pampered darling of the hen house, but a plain old Survival-of-the-Fittest Squawker; the kind of hen that along about the first of May begins clucking in a vexed tone of voice, flies over the top of a two-story bam, and wanders off somewhere into the tall grass back of the cow pasture, to appear some weeks later with twelve chicks of twelve assorted patterns, ranging from Shanghai-bantam to plain yellow nondescript. She was a good, durable hen of the old school, with a wary, startled eye, an extra loud squawk, and a brain the size of a grain of salt.

Spotty was the sort of hen that could go right along day after day without steam heat or elevators in her coop and manage to make a living. As soon as I saw her, my heart swelled with pride, for I knew I had secured a very rare variety of hen. Since every man that can tell a chicken from an ostrich – and some that can’t – has become a chicken fancier, the aristocratic, raised-by-hand, pedigree fowl has become as common as dirt, and it is indeed difficult to secure a genuine mongrel hen. I was elated. As nearly as I could judge by first appearances, I was the owner of one of the most mongrel hens that ever laid a plain, omelette-quality egg.

When I had made a coop by nailing a few slats across the front of a soap box, and had nailed Spotty in, I took the coop under my arm and went into the back yard. Mr. Millington was there, and Mr. Rolfs was there, and they were arguing angrily about the respective merits of White Wyandottes and White Orpingtons, but when they saw me they uttered two loud cries of joy and ran to meet me. I tried to cling to the coop, but they wrested it from me and together carried it in triumph to the north corner and set it on the grass. Mr. Millington pulled his compass from his pocket and set the coop exactly as advised by “The Complete Poultry Guide,” with the bars facing the morning sun, and Rolfs hurried into the back lot and hunted up a piece of bone, which he crushed with a brick and placed in the coop, as advised by “The Gentleman Poultry Fancier.” He told us that a supply of bone was most necessary if he expected his hen to lay eggs, and that he knew this hen of his was going to be a great layer. He said he had given the egg question years of study, and that he could tell a good egger when he saw one.

Millington told me his coop was not as he had meant it to be, but said it would do until he could get one built according to scientific poultry principles. He pointed out that the poultry coop should be heated by steam, and showed me that there was no room in the soap box for a steam heating plant. He said he would not trust his flock of chickens through the winter unless there was steam heating installed.

Then Rolfs and Millington said they guessed the first thing to do, as it was so late in the season, was to set their hen immediately, and as it would probably take Spotty thirteen days to lay enough eggs, they told me to run down to the delicatessen store and buy thirteen eggs, while they arranged a scientific nest in the corner of their coop, for sitting purposes. When I suggested that perhaps Spotty was not ready to set, they laughed at me. They said they could see I would never make a prosperous chicken farmer if I put off until to-morrow what the hen ought to do to-day, and that a hen that ought to set, and would not set, must be made to set. Millington said that he did not mind if Spotty wanted to lay. If she felt so, she could go ahead and lay while she was taking her little rests between sets. He said that in that way she would be doubly useful and that, judging by appearances, she was the kind of hen that could do two or three things at the same time.

Mr. Prawley, when he saw we were going to keep our hen, came out and spoke to Mr. Millington, Mr. Rolfs, and me. He said he had an aversion to hens, but that if I insisted he would devote some of his time to the hen, but Mr. Millington, Mr. Rolfs, and I assured him we would not need his help. We felt that the three of us, with occasional aid from Isobel, could manage that hen.

The next day Mr. Millington and Mr. Rolfs were so swelled with pride that they would not speak to me on the train. Millington did not ask me, that entire day, to take a little run up to Port Lafayette in his automobile. I heard him tell one man on the train to town that he had just set his eighteen prize White Orpingtons, and I heard Rolfs tell another man, at the same time, about a coop he had just had made for his White Wyandottes. He drew a sketch of it on the back of an envelope, showing the location of the heating plant, the location of the gasoline brooders, and the battery of eight electric incubators. He said he saw but one mistake he had made, which was that he had had a gravel roof put on. It should have been slate. He was afraid the hens would fly up onto the roof and eat the gravel for digestive purposes, and if a lot of tarry gravel got in their craws and stuck together in a lump, his hens would suffer from indigestion. But he said he meant to have the gravel roof taken off at once, regardless of cost, but he had not quite decided on a slate roof. One of the slates might become loosened and fall and kill one of his prize White Wyandottes, which he held at seventy-five dollars each. If he could avoid the tar trouble, Rolfs said, he ought to have twelve hundred laying hens by the end of the summer, besides the broilers he would sell. He said he was going straight to a distinguished chemist when he reached town to learn if there was any dissolvent that would dissolve tar in a chicken’s craw, without harming the craw.

Then Millington drew a sketch of the automatic heat regulator he was having made to attach to his heating apparatus. He said that ever since he had been keeping poultry he had made a study of coop heating, and that the trouble with most coops was that they were either too hot or too cold. He said a cold coop meant that the chickens got chilly and exhausted their vitality growing thick feathers when all their strength should have been used in egg-laying, and that a hot coop meant that the chickens felt lax and indolent. A hot coop enervated a chicken and made it too lazy to lay eggs, Millington said, but this regulator he was having made would keep the heat at an even temperature, summer and winter, and render the hens bright and cheerful and inclined to do their best. Millington explained that this was especially necessary with White Orpingtons, which are great eaters and consequently more inclined toward nervous dyspepsia, which makes a hen moody. He was going on in this way, and every one was hanging on his words, when he happened to say that one thing he always attended to most particularly was the state of his hens’ teeth. He said he had, so far, avoided dyspepsia in his hens, by keeping their teeth in good condition. Every one knew poor teeth caused stomach troubles.

That was the end of Millington. Rolfs had been green with jealousy because so many commuters were listening to Millington, and the moment Millington mentioned teeth Rolfs sneered.

“How many teeth do White Orpingtons have, Millington?” he asked.

“I did not know they had any.”

Then Millington saw his mistake, and did his best to explain that as a rule chickens had no teeth, but that he had, by a process of selection, created a strain that had eighteen teeth, nine above and nine below, but no one believed him, and Rolfs was crowing over him when he made his mistake. He was bragging that he never made a mistake of that kind, because he knew hens never got indigestion in any such way. All that was necessary he said, was to let them have plenty of exercise, and to let them out once in a while for a good fly. He said he let his hens out once every three days, so they could fly from tree to tree.

Then Millington asked, sneeringly, how high his hens could fly, and Rolfs said they were in such good condition they thought nothing of flying to the top of a forty-foot elm tree, and Millington sneered and said any one could guess what kind of White Wyandottes Rolfs had, when a common White Wyandotte is so heavy it cannot fly over a rake handle. That was the end of Rolfs, and I was glad of it, for the two of them had been getting enough reputation on the strength of my chickens. They sneaked out of the smoking car, and at last I had a chance to say a few words, modestly of course, about my splendid group of six hundred Buff Leghorns. I did not brag, as Millington and Rolfs had bragged, but stated facts coldly and calmly, and my words met the attention they deserved, for I was not speaking without knowledge, as Millington and Rolfs had spoken, but as a man who owns a hen can speak.

I reached home that evening in a pleasant state of mind, for I knew how kind hearted Isobel is, and I knew she would see, if I placed it before her, that it was extremely cruel to keep a hen in solitary confinement, when the hen had probably been accustomed to a great deal of society. I felt sure that in a few days Isobel would order me to purchase enough more poultry to allow Spotty to lead a pleasant and sociable life. But when Isobel met me at the gate she disheartened me.

She said the grocer’s grandmother had not been seriously ill, after all; she had been in a mere comatose condition, and had come to, and the grocer had come back, and he had called and taken Spotty. He offered to kill her – Spotty, not Isobel or his grandmother – but Isobel could not bear to eat Spotty so soon after she had been a member of our family, so the grocer took Spotty away and sent up another roaster. At least he said it was another, but after I had carved it I had my doubts. In general strength and durability the roaster and Spotty were one.

The next morning, when I went out to see if Mr. Prawley had hoed the garden properly, I found Mr. Rolfs and Mr. Millington leaning over my fence. They were unabashed.

“I have just been looking over your place,” said Rolfs, “and I must say it is a most admirably located place on which to keep a cow. And if you want any suggestions on cow-keeping, you may call on me at any time. I have studied the cow, in all her moods and tenses, for years.”

“Nonsense!” said Millington. “A man is foolish to try to keep live stock. Live stock is subject to all the ills – ”

“Such as toothache!” sneered Rolfs.

“All the ills of man and beast,” continued Millington. “What you want is an automobile. Now I will sell mine – ”

“No!” I said positively.

“You only say that because you do not know my automobile as I know it,” said Millington. “It is a wonder, that machine is. Now, I propose that to-morrow you and your wife take a little run up to Port Lafayette with me and my wife. After the cares of chicken raising – ”

“Very well, Millington,” I said, “we will go to Port Lafayette!”