THE GOBBLER WHO WAS LONESOME. 



A HISTORICAL FACT. 



Turkeys are social creatures and, 

 like some boys and girls, do not like to 

 be left for any length of time to find 

 their food or their pleasures alone. 



Big Tom was a mammoth gobbler of 

 the bronze family, which stands high in 

 Turkeydom. Big Tom loved to^ have a 

 group of admiring mates and social 

 equals about when he spread his jaw and 

 sang his song. Some taller bipeds who 

 spoke a different language said that his 

 song of ''gobble-obble-obble" was not 

 pleasing. This remark may have been 

 the reason why Big Tom's wattles grew 

 so scarlet each time he sang, but it is to 

 be doubted. 



When the spring days had grown long 

 three hen turkeys came off their nests 

 with broods of turkey chicks, toO' valu- 

 able to the farmer to be left entirely to 

 the turkey mother's judgment and care. 

 Hence these various broods, numbering 

 in all twenty-seven chicks, were penned 

 into tiny homes and fed on food fur- 

 nished by their master. 



Big Tom watched these proceedings 

 for about one week, and then evidently 

 rebelled at the taking of his kingdom 

 away from him. 



He first persuaded one brood to fol- 

 low him into a field where grasshoppers 

 bounded and abounded. This brood he 

 kept over night housed under his great 

 wings. His success pleased him, for in 

 a few days a second brood was discov- 

 ered to be missing, and two hen turkeys 

 were idling away their time talking over 

 their troubles or happiness through the 

 bars of their wooden prisons. 



But the climax was reached when in 

 a distant field a few days later Big Tom 

 was found chaperoning a party of 

 twenty-seven young tourist turkeys of a 



very tender age, through a field where 

 insect food was too plentiful for the 

 farmer's profit, but just right for sturdy 

 bronze turkeys, both young and old. 



The farmer attempted to drive his 

 majesty, Big Tom, back to his quarters 

 near the barn, but the young turks dis- 

 appeared at their father's first warning 

 cluck or signal, and Big Tom showed 

 plainly that he resented interference with 

 his own plans for his children's future. 



The farmer returned to the house 

 alone and finding the three turkey hens 

 calmly gossiping through the slatted 

 fronts of their coops, gave them their 

 liberty, and went back to planting his 

 crop in the distant field, where he found 

 Big Tom happy with his party of young 

 adventurers. 



Big Tom never allowed one turkey 

 chick to return night or day to its coop 

 or its mother. In the fall, the farmer 

 and his boys counted twenty-seven well 

 grown turkeys perched on the fence back 

 of the barn, with his majesty, their 

 father, half way down the hne, where 

 his eyes could take in all their doings. 



The hen turkeys had gone about their 

 own work, raised other broods and 

 brought them up in coops with various 

 losses, but Big Tom of the red wattles 

 has always been celebrated in that local- 

 ity from that year down to the present 

 date as the best manager of a turkey 

 ranch ever known. 



At Thanksgiving time Big Tom's good 

 qualities were enumerated by a large 

 party gathered at the farmer's table, and 

 if his majesty could have heard the flat- 

 tering remarks his pride would have per- 

 haps caused him to give back an answer- 

 ing "gobble-obble-obble." 



Mary Catherine Judd. 



198 



