PUFFER, THE PIGEON.
What pretty things are pigeons, how happy and nice they look sitting onthe house-top, and walking up and down the sloping roof with theirpretty pink feet and slender legs; and then how they flutter up intothe air, making circles round the house, and now and then darting offon a straight flight across the fields. Soon after we came to live atour country house, my sister had a present of a pair of fantailpigeons, quite white. They were beauties, not the slightest speck ofany colour was on their feathers; and when they walked about with theirtails spread out in a fan, and their necks pulled up so proudly, wethought them the prettiest creatures we had ever seen. Our Papa allowedus to have a nice place made for them in the roof of the stables, withsome holes for them to go in at, and a board before the holes for themto alight on; inside there were some niches for nests, and as thefantails were quite young, we soon ventured to put them in there. Atfirst we spread a net over their holes, so that they could only walkabout on the board outside; and when we thought they knew the look ofthe place well, we let them have their entire liberty, and they neverleft us.
Next we obtained a pair of tumblers, these were small dumpy littlebirds, of a burnished sort of copper colour, and such queer shortlittle bills; when they were flying, they turned head over heels in theair, without in the least interrupting their flight. Then we had somecapuchins, they were very curious-looking creatures, white and palereddish brown, with a sort of a frill sticking up round their necks,and the back of their heads. We called them our Queen Elizabeths, fortheir ruffs were much more like her's than like a monk's hood, fromwhich resemblance they are named. Besides these, we had several commonpigeons, some pretty bluish and white. We fed them regularly in theyard, and when they saw us run out of the house, with our wooden bowlfull of grain, they came fluttering down and took it out of our hands,and strutted about close to us so tamely and nicely; and then theywould whirl up again in the air.
We lived quite close to a railway station, and at one time of theautumn, a great number of sacks of grain were brought there forcarriage to distant parts of the country; for the corn fields were verynumerous about us. In the process of unloading these sacks from thecarts, and again packing them on the railway trucks, a quantity of cornwas spilt about, and our pigeons were not slow to find this out; wenoticed they were constantly flying over into the station-yards; andsometimes when we went to feed them in the morning, they did not comefor our breakfast at all, having already made a great meal at thestation. There was an old pigeon-house in the roof of the luggagestore, which formed part of the station buildings; and our ungratefulpigeons actually went and built some of their nests in this pigeonhouse in preference to our own. At least, they laid their eggs there;as for building a nest they never did, they trod an untidy sort ofhollow in the straw and wool we placed for them, and there laid theireggs.
We often wondered why it was they did not build beautiful compact andsmooth nests like the little hedge birds. That was the only thing aboutthe pigeons that we did not like--their dirty untidy nests, and thefrightful ugliness of the newly-hatched pigeons. The first nest theyhad, was made by the white fantails, and we had anxiously watched forthe hatching, expecting that we should have two beautiful little softwhite downy pigeons, something like young chickens, or, still better,young goslings. And how disappointed we were when we saw the littlefrights, with their bare great heads and lumps of eyes, and their uglyred-skinned bodies, stuck full of bluish quills. After that we did notmuch trouble ourselves about the young pigeons, until they came outwith some feathers, and tried to fly; but for all that, it was veryprovoking to see them go off to another house.
Our favourite of all, was a large handsome pouter or cropper. He was ofa kind of dove colour, mixed with green and bluish feathers, and whenhe stood upright, and swelled out his breast, he was quite beautiful.He became tamer than any one of the pigeons; he would come to thewindow when we were breakfasting, and take crumbs of bread from ourfingers, he would perch on our shoulders when we called to him in theyard, and liked to strut about at the back door, and to come into thekitchen and to peck about beneath the table; we called him Puffer. Buthe too was very fond of going to the station, and sitting on thestore-house roof; and at last, really half our pigeons had their nestsin the station house instead of in ours. We went and fetched them out,nests and eggs altogether, several times; and then we persuaded thestation men to block up the door of the old pigeon-house, whichprevented them from laying their eggs there, but they still greedilypreferred that yard to our own. Then came the harvest time. There weremany fields of corn within sight of our house, and we perceived thatour naughty pigeons took to flying out to these fields, instead ofgoing so much to the station. How beautiful they looked with Puffer attheir head, darting along in the sunshine, till they were almost out ofsight; and in about an hour they would come back again, spreadingthemselves all over the house-top, and lying down to bask in the sun,and to rest after their long flight, and the good meal they had made inthe corn-fields. Puffer would always come down to us, however tired,and let us stroke him and kiss his glossy head and neck.
One day after they had all flown far out all over the fields, we hearda shot at a distance; we were not noticing it much, beyond saying toeach other, "There is some one shooting;" but the gardener who was withus observed, "I wish it may not be some one firing at your pigeons. Thefarmers can't bear their coming after the grain; I am sorry they havetaken to flying away to them corn-fields." This alarmed us, and wewatched eagerly for the return of the pigeons. "Here they come," Iexclaimed, and presently they were all settling as usual about thehouse top, Puffer in the midst quite safe. "Count them, Sir," said thegardener. So we set to work to number the fantails, tumblers, QueenElizabeths, and dear old Puffer; all right, but surely there were notso many of the common pigeons; no, two were missing! "They've been shotthen, sure as fate," said the gardener, "we shall lose them all Ifear." Next morning we gave them a double breakfast, hoping that notfeeling hungry, they would not again go to the fields; but off theywent as usual about mid-day, and very anxiously we watched for theirreturning flight; we could always see Puffer a long way off, he was somuch larger than the others, and we longed for the time when all thecorn would be reaped and carried away, out of the reach of ourfavourites.
One by one our pigeons diminished; we begged the gardener to speak tothe farmers about, and ask them not to shoot our pigeons; but he saidthat it must be very annoying to the farmers to see a tribe of birdsdevouring the produce of their hard labour and anxiety; and that he didnot wonder at their endeavouring to destroy the thieves. He said thatif he spoke about it, the farmer would say, "Shut up your birds, and ifthey don't meddle with us, we shan't meddle with them." Then weconsulted whether we could cage our pigeons; but they had always hadtheir liberty, and we were sure that they would not thrive if shut up.So we must take our chance, and the naughty things persisted in flyingover the fields to the distant corn. One day, no Puffer returned to us;and in despair we gave away all our remaining pigeons.