In Defense of the Hen

‘HENS have no brains,’ declared the wife of a modern farmer as she chased a fat old Wyandotte toward the roosting-place she should have sought voluntarily.

Before I could challenge the woman’s statement, the hen, by a brilliant strategic movement, completely eluded her pursuer, and with a triumphant cackle disappeared in the tall grass. The method of her escape showed brains, there could be no two opinions about that; but it was her cackle that should have settled any wavering doubt in the mind of her detractor, for that cackle was uttered at exactly the right moment; not an instant too soon, not a second too late. And it takes brains to know just when to cackle.

A glance at the woman’s face decided me to postpone till another time my defense of the hen. The vanquished rarely have an open mind in regard to the merits of the victor.

After all, would it be worth while to make any attempt, seasonable or unseasonable, to convert this woman to my estimate of the hen? No doubt she would call me old-fashioned, and would assert that since the introduction of steam-heated henhouses, modern nests, perches, brooders, and incubators, since the hen had been deprived of the joy of motherhood and the privilege of rearing her own offspring, there had been a decided falling-off in her mental equipment; that having absolutely no use for brains, she no longer possessed them. Very likely this upto-date farmer’s wife would laugh derisively when she had forced from me the admission that it had been forty years since I had owned a hen. Women have a way of being so exact in regard to incidentals; they are so exasperatingly correct about trifles. But when one is sure of his ground, what difference does a mere detail of forty years matter?

To be sure I should also have to admit that I had owned and raised but one hen. However, if the man of one book serves as a warning, ought not the owner of one hen to prove equally formidable?

This hen of mine belonged to no special breed. She was just a little yellow ball of fluffy feathers the morning I found her in the yard with a broken leg, the victim of a foster-mother’s cruelty.

With bungling boyish tenderness I set the broken leg, and felt the first exultant thrill of ownership when my grandmother said, ‘You may have her.’

‘What shall I name my chicken?’

After a moment’s hesitation my grandmother said, ’Oh, call her Marie Antoinette.’

I accepted the name with no inkling of the fate it was intended to foretell.

After Marie Antoinette had grown into a beautiful hen, I was awakened one morning by a gurgling note of joy.

I opened my eyes to see a newly laid egg at my feet, and Marie Antoinette gazing at me with a look of affection in her small brown eyes.

She waited just long enough to be sure that I was awake, then she disappeared, as she had come, through the open window.

With the egg in my hand I ran to the kitchen.

‘See, see, granny! Marie Antoinette has laid her first egg on my bed!’

‘ So she has, child. Tell ’Liza to poach it for your breakfast.’

Poach it! Poach Marie Antoineette’s first egg! No, never! I should keep that egg for ever and ever. Accordingly I wrapped it in my best handkerchief and gave it the place of honor among my treasures, beside a button from Stonewall Jackson’s coat.

Marie Antoinette did not come to lay the second egg on my bed. This led my grandmother to remark, —

‘Now your hen is hiding her nest somewhere; you must watch her and bring in the eggs as fast as she lays them.’

I soon found the nest, but its whereabouts remained a delicious secret. When it had twelve eggs in it Marie Antoinette was missed at feeding time. After three weeks of impatient waiting— on my part at least — she came proudly into the yard with nine little chickens in her wake.

From the very first day she had a regular system for the management of her young. In the cool of the early morning she showed them how to find bugs, worms, and grasshoppers; when the noon hour approached she took them under the shade of the great live oak. She taught them to rush to cover under her motherly wings when they saw the shadow made by the whiteheaded eagle as he soared overhead.

As I sat one morning under the old mulberry tree, watching her divide a particularly large and succulent earthworm among her brood, a sudden cloud seemed to overshadow us, and before I could rise up or even cry out, the white-headed eagle had swooped down upon Marie Antoinette and borne her away.

I watched his upward flight, too horrified to utter a sound, but when I finally gave vent to my anguish the united wail of the Sabine men and women before the walls of Rome could not have carried more anguish than did my lament.

‘The white-headed eagle has carried off Marie Antoinette!’

My grandmother showed genuine concern at my grief. ‘Come to the house,’ she urged, ‘and Liza will pull the watermelon out of the well and you may cut it.’

Eat watermelon, and Marie Antoinette being devoured by the whiteheaded eagle! The golden apples of the Hesperides could not have tempted me then.

Although I have never owned anot her hen, that experience of my early boyhood on a Mississippi farm gave me a sentiment for the hen. I should like to see her on a plane, at least, with the turkey and the goose.

She is their superior in every way except that of size, and yet they have long held the place of honor on the Christmas and the Thanksgiving dinner-table, and they have had reams and reams of poetry written about them.

But the hen, that most important of all feathered creatures, who writes poetry about her? Who even takes the trouble to know anything about her early history in America? Who owned the first hen; when and where did she land upon our shores?

Why not make amends for our long years of neglect by making her the centre of the feast on the Fourth of July? Hereafter let it be our Thanksgiving turkey, our Christmas goose, and our Fourth-of-July hen.