OCR Text |
Show Don't Really Seek Worms i ' Observant Woman Thinks the Fact of Hens Scratching Soil Is Merely Old Custom. Nothing cheers me more than to sit on a big rock in the barnyard and watch the hens walking about. Their very ait pleases me the way they bob their heads, the "genteel" way they have of picking up their feet, for all the world as though they cared e where they stepped; tbe absent and superior manner In which they "scratch for worms." their gaze fixed on the sky, thpn cock their heads downwards with an indifferent air, absently ab-sently pick up a chip, drop it and walk on. Did anyone ever see a hen really find a worm? I never did. There are no worms In our barnyard, anyhow; any-how; Jonathan must have dug them all up for bait when he was a boy. I have even tried throwing some real worms to them, and they always re-, spond by a few nervous cackles, and walk past the brown wriggiers with a detached manner, and robins get them later. And yet they continue to go through all these forms and we continue con-tinue to call it scratching for worms. From "The Jonathan Papers," by Elizabeth Woolbridge. . , I |