Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1885 — The Cow and the Hen—A Rural Tale. [ARTICLE]

The Cow and the Hen—A Rural Tale.

Patrick Doyle, of Middletown, Pa , has a cow on his dairy farm, near that ’ village, whose life is made miserable by a hen’s singular attachment for her. For over a year the hen has been an inseparable companion of the cow, and spends all of the time, when not on her nest, or joining the other chickens when they are fed, perched on the cow’s back. There she roosts at night, whether the cow may be in the barn, the barnyard, or the pasture. The cow does not approve of this close companionship, and is always trying to shake the hen off her back or whisk her off with her tail. The hen is always prepared for these attempts, and when the cow lowers her head and shakes her shoulders the hen trots along her back beyond the effects of the shaking. If this brings her within reach of a possible whisk of the cow’s tail, she wattes it closely, and at the first movement of that appendage she trots back again to a place of safety between the cow’s horns. At times the cow will suddenly start on a dead run around a field or the barnyard, lowering her head, lashing her tail, and bellowing, as if to terrify the hen into taking her departure. The hen will then scramble to and fro on the cow’s back to maintain her position, but the result of this maneuver on the part of the cow is, nine times out of ten, to force its unwelcome companion to fly off. The cow is no sooner at rest than the hen steals up and mounts again to her perch. This amusing scene is witnessed almost daily by people who go to the farm for the purpose.—Pittsburgh Times.