HEN AND HAWK.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XX, Issue X, 5 March 1898, Page 296

HEN AND HAWK.

It in generally supposed, and not without reason, that the hen Is a particularly stupid bird. 1 have in my yam, however, an old Brahma hen whom nature has endowed with an intelligence and originality which would do credit to the average dog. This old bird is so occupied with impressing her superiority upon the other hens that she has earned the sobriquet of ‘The War Horse.’ She lays very few eggs, but she is an unsurpassable mother, and to her are entrusted only the most valuable sittings. Last July this hen had charge of a tine brood of chickens. One morning, as I called the half-grown broods together for their breakfast, I heard a loud and angry cackling in the woods alxmt. a hundred yards distant. I continued to call, and presently the ‘War Horse’ appeared on the edge of the woods. She cackled louder than ever, but refused to come to breakfast. All her chickens were feeding at the trough. 1 counted them. There was not one missing, so I paid no more attention to the old hen. In a minute or two she came up to the trough, but would not touch the food. 1 stepped around to pick her up, for she was a pet; but the moment I approached she started oft' again for the woods, all the while cackling and screaming fiercely. About twenty yards away she stopped and looked around, as if to see if I were following. Her wishes were so plain that I determined t > gratify them. As soon as she saw that I was coming she ran into the woods at such a pace that I lost sigli t of her ; but her energetic utterances were a sufficient guide. In a few seconds she stopped, and I came up to her. She was standing on the edge of a little open glade, in the centre of which stood a huge hawk, devouring a chicken. The hen shrieked first at the hawk, and then at me, as if urging me to come forward and give battle to the marauder. I came, hotly enough ; but the hawk eluded my attack, and sailed off hastily through the tree-tops. The dead chicken proved to be one of a brood whose mother was all the time feeding comfortably in the chicken-yard. While I was identifying the remains I saw the War Horse stride over to a pile of underbrush near by, and make a great fuss as if she were trying to drive out something hidden therein ; and presently a chicken, belonging to another brood, came forth, still panic-stricken, and was conducted by the War Horse home to breakfast. To that wise hen I have promised an old age into which no fear of the knife shall ever intrude.