The Dalles times-mountaineer. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1882-1904, 1896-10-03
FOULED THE FOWLS.
A Massachusetts, Man Lays Out
His Neighbor's Hens.
1t Was Not a Case of Assault, But Salt
Was Used In the Proceeding and
the Law Took the Part of
the Salter.

AS stirrer-up of litigation and q
promoter of quarrels and divisions be-
tween next-door neighbors the suburb
an hen is without an equal, says the
| Baltimore Sun. She illustrates most
forcibly in her daily life and practices
the reprehensible habits which st. Paul
so strongly condemns in women. She
is constitutional busybody, always
eager to be gadding about, and con-
sumed with an unquenchable and in
satiable curiosity. No matter how big
yard she has of her own, she is
never satisfied until she can get into
the adjoining premises and discover
what is going on over there. II there
are any other hens there, nothing de-
lights her more than to create feeling
of jealousy in their hitherto peaceful
and happy home, or to involve her hus-
band in mortal combat with some
ueighboring knight of the spurs. If
there are any flowers, fruit or vegeta-
bles, she derives the keenest enjoyment
from their destruction. Then stones
and other missiles darken the sky, the
atmosphere grows sulphurous with un-
complimentary epithets and there is
personal collision, or law suit be-
tween the neighbors, while the fiendish
cause of broken friendships and ir-
ritated tempers flies safely back to her
own lot and goes industriously TO
scratching as if she had never been Off
the premises and had been devoting
her entire attention and thought to
preparations for numerous family.
But sometimes suburban hens make
fatal mistake, as they did in Maiden,
Mass, the other day. A poultry
fancier there had stocked his yard
with some very aristocratic fowls of
the feminine gender, but no amount of
good blood can drown feminine curiosi-
ty, and so these well-bred hens acted
just as ill-bred ones would have done,
making frequent excursions into the
adjoining yard. The neighboring pro-
prietor did not like hens, and as they
would come where they were not
wanted, he sprinkled salt all over his
premises. The hens, like Eve, ate
greedily and death was the result.
Too much salt is fatal to hens, but they
10 not know it, and they will eat 1t till
they expire when they can get It.
Possibly the habit is due to an un-
selfish desire to salt their eggs so well
in advance that their masters will
have no trouble about the matter at
the breakfast table, but we are rather
inclined to think it proceeds from a
desire to do,precisely what they should
not
But to return to the salt-eating henb
of Maiden. When their proprietor
learned how his hens had been salted
down while still alive, he sued the
salter, whether for assault or not is
not stated. He got nothing, however,
not even n pinch of salt, for the
learned Judge Pettingill held that q
man has a right to scatter salt on his
own premises, and that hens should
stay at home and mind their own bust
ness. If they go abroad and get on a
salt spree, and then go up salt river,
their owner must accept the result of
their rashness. To prevent such un-
pleasant occurrences in our own
suburbs amateur Baltimore poultry
men would do well to have good
'euces around their property aud to
tut one wing of the too inquisitive
'emale fowl. In addition it might be
veil to send for Prof. Hamerik, of the
institute, who is said to be
thoroughly conversant with hen
anguage, and get him to lecture to
he assembled egg-producers on tbe
in and danger of scratching in the
lext yard, enforcing his remarks with
he tragic story of the Maiden hens.