Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1875 — Ad Ostrich Story. [ARTICLE]

Ad Ostrich Story.

Hufnagle, the showman of whose elephant I told you the other day, had an ostrich which he traded for a mule to a man named Leech, who owns a little place near New Hope. Leech read somewhere that ostriches are very valuable on account of their feathers, and he intended to try the experiment of cultivating them, so he secured this one to begin with. He turned it loose in the yard and that night it ate all the surface gravel off the w r alks, and it was busy breakfasting on the garden hoe when Leech came down to look after it. He fed it heartily so as to keep down its appetite, but that morning it swallowed four horse-shoes that werelyingin a cart, and it disposed of six feet of trace-chain belonging to the subsoil plow. Leech was somewhat alarmed, but he gave the bird as much supper as it would eat, and felt satisfied that its hunger would not rage during the night. Next morning, however, he was surprised to find that the ostrich had eaten a hole through the wall of the smoke-house and had chewed off all the door-knobs on that side of tbe dwelling. When Leech came out the bird had swallowed the pump-handle and was making an earnest but ineffectual effort to take in the pump. Leech dissuaded it, however, and led it solemnly away. That day it ate nothing of a revolutionary character but a set of Mrs. Leech’s old hoops, and when Leech ascertained this he collected all the sec ond-hand hoop-skirts that the neighbors had to spare and fed them to the ostrich. It cleaned up the pile in less than an hour and then it ate six of Fanny Leech’s croquet balls which were lying in the grass and swallowed the baby’s toy drum. That afternoon it protruded its head through the kitchen window while the girl was washing the dinner dishes and suddenly swallowed three tumblers, a gravy-dish and a broken but-ter-crock. When Leech came home that night and heard the news he deckled to shoot the bird the first thing in the morning. He loaded his gun for thepurpose and put it in the shed outside the kitchen door. During the night an explosion was heard and when Leech descended with a lantern to ascertain the cause he perceived the ostrich lying dead in the shed. It had swallowed the gun, muzzle foremost, and had firdff the weapon while gnawing at the trigger. Mr. Leech has given up the idea of cultivating the ostrich. That bird is too eminently digestive for him. — Max Adder, in Danbury News. The editor of the Eureka (Cal.) Sentinel has gone to attend the State Legislature as a member, and his partner publisher a card in which he says: “ During his absence the conduct of the paper will devolve upon our talented self and our humble assistant, and we want it distinctly understood that anything appearing in these columns particularly brilliant is to be credited to the former, while the latter is alone responsible for such articles as afe calculated to bring down upon the aiithor the condemnation of a discriminating public.”