Guinea Feather Should Be The National Flower

( Originally Published 1908 )

The Guinea Hens

ABOUT a year ago I reprinted in these columns a paragraph from the London Pall Mall Gazette, as follows : " You can join the American Academy of Immortals on payment of two guineas. This guarantees your immortality for ninety-nine years with privilege of renewal. Our Yankee brothers are a strange and gullible people. " Well, a few weeks later a man from Kalamazoo wrote me thus: "I want you to enroll my name in the American Academy of Immortals and in payment I send you two guineas. "

There was no money in the letter, but that afternoon a box came by express containing two guinea hens.

Wouldn't that give you cold feet ?

One of the guinea hens was a rooster.

But which one I didn't know, excepting that one was a bit more pompous than the other and had more to say. And this, I assumed, was Mr. Guineahen.

The guinea pig is n't a pig and doesn't come from Guinea.

The guinea fowl does—being a partially domesticated partridge, prairie-chicken or sage-hen of the Guinea jungle.

Wild birds and wild animals mate—domcsticate them and they become promiscuous. I do not know why this is, but it does seem as if civilization were immoral. Guineas mate and are true and loyal until death do them part.

These two guineas the Michigan man sent me wore tailor-made suits of faultless fit.

I sent the guineas up to the Roycroft farm so to keep the hawks away.

When a guinea sees a hawk or any big bird flying around, he gives the alarm, and all the fowls but the guineas scoot for cover. The guinea just flies up on the gate and shoots forth a torrent of Billingsgate defiance. No bird that wears feathers has a vocabulary equal to the guinea—it is so profane that it is unprintable.

Epithet, ridicule, sarcasm and cuss-words are sent forth in rapid fire. When a guinea is a little excited you can hear him a mile. As before intimated it is Mr. Guineahen who makes most of the noise, but his wife is a good imitator, and she always echoes the sentiments of her liege political, social, religious. On the subject of hawks, weasels, skunks and strange cats, old Mr. and Mrs. Guinea are absolutely one. On non-essentials they occasionally differ, and exhibit these differences as to what constitutes wit by many interesting little physical culture exhibitions.

In other words, they fight. But with guineas a foreign disturbance always makes peace at home.

The guinea has surpassed man in this—he has abolished fear. He sounds warning notes, but as for himself, he resembles Fuzzy Wuzzy, his former owner, and does n't give a dam.

Mr. Guinea is boss of the barn-yard. Even a game bird considers discretion the better part of valor. A guinea will tackle an English bull dog. If the dog knew his power he might win, or at least get a slice of the gate receipts, but when a guinea begins to say things at a bull dog—or any dog for that matter—that dog stipulates all the facts concerning his pedigree to be as stated, and hikes.

About June one of our guineas disappeared. The other one used to come around, lonesome like, just a-wearying for his mate. He would fly up on the ridge of the barn and call and call.

We felt awful sorry for him. We thought his mate must have been killed or stolen.

But one day, would you believe it, I saw those two guineas out in the stubble, a half mile from the barn. They were cooing away, chuckling, clucking and seemingly polishing up their vocabularies.

I was that rejoiced that I went right out to see them. As I approached I saw a brown moving mass close to the ground all around them.

This mass was baby guinea hens. There were four thousand of them!

As I approached, Mr. Guineahen gave a cluck and yelled, "Low bridge!" and the little ones disappeared as if my old friend Kellar were in charge of the show.

I stood still and in about five minutes Mr. Guineahen gave another Number Six cluck and shouted, "All safe—let her go ! " and the ground was alive with the guinea chicks.

They were little brown, fluffy things about as big as what the girls call " a spool of cotton," the kind that used to cost us five cents, but which now is six.

I watched them for an hour. Mr. Guineahen kept circling round and round the brood talking in a monotone to himself. I never heard such boasting and bragging! He scouted race suicide and flouted Malthus.

" What this country needs is more guineas, " he declared in a quiet cackle. All the time he watched the sky for hawks, and hunted for seeds and bugs, and these he passed right over to his wife and family.

He, was the busiest and happiest bird I ever saw. Toward sundown he led his picnic party over to the bushes, and I saw Mr. Guineahen sit down close to his mate and the little ones nestle under them for warmth and shelter. We read about how two thousand years ago " a hen spreadeth her wings and gathereth her young. "

But in this brooding business Mr. Guinea is just as clever and reliable as Mrs. Guinea, and the little ones make no distinction.

It is a wise guinea chick that knows its own mother.

It must have been a month before I saw our guineas again. This time they came right into the barn-yard—the father and mother, and the eighteen little ones with red feet and bills.They were about as big as Indiana quails. All were exactly alike, very well disciplined; they moved in a solid flock.

Mr. Guinea fluttered about, circled his family and called loudly for cracked corn and wheat.

We made haste to fill the order, and woe betide the Plymouth Rock that dare come near until those twenty guineas had enough.

Having eaten, the old ones flew up on the fence —a five-board affair, horse high, pig tight and bull strong.

The old guineas walked along on the top board and the little ones, one at a time, tackled the lower board, which was about a foot from the ground.

The second night the little ones tried the second board and they spread out in a straight line, eighteen strong, with red beaks all pointed one way.

The third day they tried the third rail, and at the end of the week they had all conquered the top board. A week later I saw the whole bunch sitting right on the ridge of the barn, singing out of tune in a discordant chorus, but very happy. Every night at sunset they sat on the ridge-pole and sang vespers. In the morning they did their matins from their roost in the trees.

Last night I was awakened about two o'clock by the guineas—they were all singing, calling and shouting at once. I was wondering what it was all about when I heard Ali Baba's voice in a loud whisper, " Git up quick—don't you hear the guineas, they are yelling for god-sake ! Something is wrong!"

I slid out of bed, jumped into my trousers, and got out of doors. It was very dark.

"The trouble is in the chicken house, I reckon ! " said Baba. We made for the poultry house.

As we approached I saw the door was open. A man sprang out and ran past me. I made a grab for him, but missed. Baba and I both dashed after him; we might have captured him, if Ali hadn't caught the clothes line under his chin and been sent to grass As he went down he said something almost as bad as that which the guineas were saying from the treetops.

The dark figure we were following tumbled over the fence and disappeared in the corn.

And all the time the guineas shouted.

We got a lantern, and found a bag full of something; I cut the string and six of my best Plymouth Rocks flew out of that bag, which the Mudsock had gotten ready to carry away.

We went out under the trees where the guineas were roosting and I heard Mr. Guinea shout

"All safe—everybody to bed—let 'er go !"

The discord ceased. And all around was the great, dark, quiet, all-enfolding night, the silence broken only by the gentle chirrup of the crickets.