I was riding through Brookline, Mass., one fine afternoon, on my round-about way home from a fowl-hunting excursion in Norfolk County, when my attention was suddenly attracted by the appearance and carriage of the most extraordinary-looking bird I ever met with in the whole course of my poultry experience.
I drew up my horse, and watched this curiosity for a few minutes, with a fowl-admirer's wonder. It was evidently a _hen_, though the variety was new to me, and its deportment was very remarkable. Her plumage was a shiny coal-black, and she loitered upon a bright-green bank in the sunshine, at the southerly side of a pretty house that stood a few yards back from the road. She was rather long-legged, and "spindle-shanked," but she moved about skippingly and briskly, as if she were treading upon thin egg-shells. Her feet were very delicate and very narrow, and her body was thin and trim; but her plumage--that glossy, jet-black, brilliant feathery habit--was "too much" for my then excited "fancy" for beautiful birds; and I thought I had never seen a tip-top fowl before.
As I gazed and wondered, this bird observed me coquettishly, and, raising herself slightly a tip-toe, she flapped her bright wings ludicrously, opened her pretty mouth, and sent forth a _crow_ so clear and sharp, and so utterly defiant and plucky, that I laughed outright in her face. I did. I couldn't help it.
She noticed my merriment, and instantly flap went those glittering wings again, and another shout--a very shriek of a crow, a termagant yell of a crow--rang forth piercingly from the lungs of my sable but beautiful inamorata.
This second crow was full of fire, and daring, and challenge, and percussion. It seemed to say, as plainly as words could have uttered it, "Who are _you_? What you after? Wouldn't you like to cage _me_ up--_s-a-y_?"
I laughed again, wondered more, stared, and shouted "Bravo! Milady, you _are_ a rum 'un, to be sure!" And again she hopped up and crowed bravely, sharply, maliciously, wildly, marvellously.
I was puzzled. I had heard of such animals before. I had read in the newspapers about Woman's Rights conventions. I had seen it stated that hens occasionally were found that "crowed like a cock." But I had never seen one before. This _was_ an extraordinary bird, evidently.