Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 198, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 August 1912 — Don’t Really Seek Worms [ARTICLE]

Don’t Really Seek Worms

Observant Woman Thinks the Fact of Hens Scratching Soli is Merely Old Custom. Nothing cheers me more than to sit An a bigrock in the barnyard and watch the hens walking about Their very gaits pleases me—the way they bob thein heads, the “genteel” way they have at picking up their feet, for ail die world aS tnojlgh they cared

where they stepped; the absent and superior manner In which they "scratch for worms,” their gaze fixed on the sky, then cock their heads downwards with an Indifferent air, absently 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; Jonathan must have dug them all up for bait when he was a boy. I

have even tried throwing some real worms io them, and they always respond by a few nervous cackles, and walk past the brown wrigglers with a detached manner, and robins get them later. And yet to go through all these forms and we continue to call it scratching for worms. —From “The Jonathan Papers,” by Elizabeth Woolbridge.