The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, Volume 1 (of 2)Paltock, Robert
Science
The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, Volume 1 (of 2)
Paltock, Robert
Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction
I told Youwarkee what I had done, and how I intended to manage the
little brood, and, if I could, to bring them up tame. We kept them some
days very warm by the fire, and fed them often, as I had seen my mother
do with her early chickens; and in a fortnight's time they were as stout
and familiar as common poultry. We kept them a long while in the house;
and when I fed them I always used them to a particular whistle, which
I also taught my wife, that they might know both us and their
feeding-time; and in a very short while they would come running, upon
the usual sound, like barn-door fowls to the name of Biddy.
There happened in this brood to be five hens and three cocks; and they
were now so tame that, having cut their wings, I let them out, when the
weather favoured, at my door, where they would pick about in the wood,
and get the best part of their subsistence; and having used them to
roost in a corner of my ante-chamber, they all came in very regularly
at night and took their places. My hens, at the usual season, laid me
abundance of eggs, and hatched me a brood or two each of chickens; so
that now I was at a loss to know what to do with them, they were become
so numerous. The ante-chamber was no longer a proper receptacle of such
a flock, and therefore I built a little house, at a small distance from
my own, on purpose for their reception and entertainment. I had by this
time cleared a spot of ground on one side of my grotto, by burning up
the timber and underwood which had covered it: this I enclosed, and
within that enclosure I raised my aviary, and my poultry thrived very
well there, seemed to like their habitation, and grew very fat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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