MOTHER GOBBLER

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12513, 31 July 1926, Page 16

MOTHER GOBBLER

“Tell you a story? Now, let me see,” and Uncle, running hfs fingers through his hair as he often did when he was thinking very deeply, rocked me to and fro. “Ah, I have one!” he exclaimed, his eyes shining. “It happened not long ago, and it’s a true one. And you’ll think its the queerest story you ever heard, I know,” he added. “Well, once upon a time on a farm, lived an old turkey gobbler, a great big turkey gobbler. Every morning we’d spy him strutting out toward the barn gobbling a worm here and a bug there —then he’d disappear and we wouldn’t see him any more that day. “We wondered where he could be, and we determined to find out, and we did, and what do you suppose he was doing? “He was out in the field at the back of the barn sitting beside a trim little guinea-hen, who had a setting of eggs to look after, with his great wing spread out over her back till just her head could be seen, and such a hot summer day it was ! “Finding a stick, we tried to poke him off, but he strongly objected. He lifted his wings and stretched out his neck and gobbled at us with fire in his eyes. “We told the good farmer’s wife what we had seen, and she laughed, and said, ‘Perhaps he wants to set.’ At that we all laughed, but do you know that that was just what he did want to do? “Every time Mrs Guinea would leave her nest he’d spread his big self down over it, and if we went near him he’d ruffle all up and get so excited that we thought he might break the eggs, so we decided to leave him alone. “Well, to make a long story short, he was given a setting of e SSf —turkey eggs—upon which to try his skill, and what do you think? He stuck to his post till he brought out seven or eight little turkeys. “Yes, indeed! And what is more, he mothered his little brood. He must have felt a bit foolish, however, for he seldom brought them out into the open. He kept them out of sight, where, very faintly, we could hear him, “Gobble, gobble-gobble, gobble,” and we knew that he was trying to soften his great, big voice as he talked to his little turkey chicks. “It certainly did look comical to see a big gobbler, with tail outspread, strutting along with tirry turkey chicks trailing behind Now, what do you think of that for a story?” asked Unde, as he ruffled my sleepy head. “Is that a really-truly one?” I asked doubtingly. “That’s a really-truly one.” And I trailed off to Dreamland, thinking how nice “Mother” Gobhler must have been (especially if he felt foolish! not to leave the little turkey chicks after he had hatched them. '