Feathered Folk 351 



Rack ! " Save and except by their crying the 

 males and females are indistinguishable. 

 They are singular among fowls in that they 

 can scent any tampering with the nest. If 

 eggs are taken from it with the bare hand, 

 ■ they will at once quit it, but if all but the nest 

 egg be dipped out with a spoon, they will lay 

 on indefinitely. 



At White Oaks, the turkeys were Black 

 Mammy's special charge, with Patsy next in 

 authority. O but the turkey hens were sly 

 creatures ! They nested in the woods lot — 

 Mrs. Baker believed in keeping them as near 

 the natural state as possible. Along towards 

 the middle of February, when the hens began 

 to yelp mornings and evenings, the big 

 bronze gobblers to strut half the day, holding 

 wings hard as they strutted, and turning their 

 red wattles to livid blue. Black Mammy 

 knew it was time to be hunting eggs. Patsy 

 wondered no little why the gobblers as they 

 strutted let fall their snouts, like veils, dang- 

 ling away down below the beak-tips well 

 upon the breast. She wondered too why the 

 Lord chose to give them such tufts of stiff 

 black beard underneath their chins. The 

 beards were certainly not pretty, nor any use 

 as she saw things. Mammy explained that 

 they really had a use — without them an old 

 gobbler would not know himself from a 



