Feminism Follies

  

   As most farmer boys know, when eggs were to be hatched, you put them under what was called, in farm parlance, a "settin' hen. I heard of a woman who tried quite another plan. Having become involved with 'equal rights' and feminist extremists, she was obsessed with the idea that all males were shirkers, and the burdens of life, were too much carried by the females.

She delighted in bees, because they killed their drones, but a peacock was to her an abomination She lived on a small farm and made life miserable for the barnyard rooster. To her, he was the symbol of all that was selfish, lazy, bombastic, and masculine.

She cut off the plume feathers of his tail and threw stones at him when he dared to crow within heaving distance. He was abashed in her presence, as she told herself a man would be if she had one.

One day it occurred to her that the rooster ought to take his turn at incubating eggs, giving each brooding hen an occasional vacation. Of course the rooster would not stay on a nest willingly, and she devised a plan for enforcing her will. She bored two holes through the bottom of the nest box, put his legs through the holes and tied them together underneath the box.

The brooding hen was frantic in her desire to get back to her nest. She wanted no such vacation! While the poor rooster exhausted himself in his struggles to get free. Only the silly woman was happy, and her happiness abated somewhat when the eggs, that survived being broken, failed to hatch.

Was the woman lacking in sagacity? Not any more than those who forget that God knew what was best when he designed chickens and families. Those who want the best out of life will respect His arrangements and will not be disappointed!

 Gleanings TOC