FEATHERING FOWLS
It doesn't often fall to my lot to pluck a fowl, but I once had a frightful struggle to feather a goose at Christmas. Goose grease and feathers adhered to my face as well as my fingers, and once or twice I sneezed. Later on someone opened the door and a 'force four' did the rest. I have had this in mind lately, for we have marked down a cockerel that is to be ours and the job of feathering it is to be mine. An old maiden aunt used to he called a had houSekeeper because she feathered her birds in a can of boiling water and took everything off by the simple process of removing the skin. 1 arqk beginning to think that she was a resourceful woman. I could, of course, buy a thing I often see advertised in American sport- ing magazines—a duck-plucker. I see no reason why it shouldn't pluck chickens equally well. We normally avoid the chore by having the birds dressed by the poulterer, but now we have cockerels at the cottage it looks as though I must learn to pluck birds. An old Welshman once told me that it is possible to do something to a chicken that makes all its feathers drop out before its neck is wrung, but
I have forgotten the vital information.
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