Feathered Folk 355 



grow very quickly — at ten days old they 

 could fly out of the pens at pleasure, and go 

 ofF with their mothers to range and run in 

 the wheat. Major Baker insisted upon rais- 

 ing all the turkeys possible because they were 

 so helpful in the time of tobacco worms. 

 Mammy had commonly seventy-five fine fel- 

 lows, tall enough when the August glut of 

 worms came, to pick worms from all but the 

 topmost leaves. There were ducks too — but 

 the trouble with them was to keep them from 

 the water. If they got to the creek they ate 

 the corkscrew shelled periwinkles, and died 

 of indigestion. Patsy wanted geese, but the 

 Major would have none of them — they ate 

 too much grass, and grazed too close, he 

 said, besides murdering sleep. 



These are the feeding-calls, and pseudo- 

 nyms for young poultry, in large part at- 

 tempts to imitate their own cries. At the 

 chicken coop : " Coo Chick ! Coo Chick ! 

 Coo-00 Chick!! Cluck! Cluck! Run! 

 Run ! Ru-un ! Chick-ee ! Chick-chick ! 

 Chickee ! " At the turkey pen, or in the 

 edge of the wheat : " Pee ! Pee ! Pee-ee ! 

 Co-pee ! Co-pee ! Pee-pee ! Pee-pee ! " 

 Young turkeys and sometimes old, are famil- 

 iarly pee-pees, not " deidees " — as some 

 writing folk, who should know better, try 

 to make it appear. Deidees are truly young 



