Peg-Legged Hen a Fighter

1905

Side-Wallops Fowl That Make Light of Her Infirmity

Laying five eggs a week in the season when prices are highest is a minor accomplishment of a Ware (Mass.) hen that has a wooden leg. The hen is of Rhode Island red stock, and is owned by Charles F. Wilcox.

The leg was broken last spring, when it was a pullet, by a stone from the hand of a wanton youth. The fractured support was bandaged in splints and the bone apparently knit. But cold weather had a bad effect and a sore developing, Mr. Wilcox decided to end the suffering of the hen.

His little daughters pleaded so strongly for the hen that Mr. Wilcox spared her life and amputated the leg. In tribute to its fortitude the hen was christened Martyr.

"Why can't Martyr have a wooden leg like other people?" inquired one of Mr. Wilcox's daughters. Mr. Wilcox facetiously referred the suggestion to Gilbert Girard, who declared the idea practicable, and after taking measurements of Martyr's right leg, fashioned a leg from hard maple and attached it.

The leg, which was fitted several weeks ago, has never been removed, and the daughters of Mr. Wilcox refuse to be convinced that scales, feathers and toes will not eventually appear on the artificial leg.

When Martyr made her first appearance with the barnyard fowl after acquiring the wooden leg, her former associates united in attacking her. Martyr, however, had learned the value of the leg as a weapon, and with hard side swipes bowled her antagonists over. Her assailants adopted a conciliatory policy thereafter.

A favorite recreation with Martyr is to insert the wooden leg in the snow, and, curling the right leg beneath its feathers, stand for half an hour or more at a time, enjoying the discomfiture of imitators. Once the wooden leg became frozen in the ice, and Martyr had to be rescued.

A Deadly Boomerang, Made and Thrown With Precision

1898

He Learned the Secret From the Natives of Australia

Civilized people, especially of the English speaking races, pride themselves upon their discoveries in electricity with which they now operate the guns of great ships of war, and they point with fear and trembling as well as satisfaction to the perfection in all sorts of dynamite bombs and explosives which they may, on occasion, use to kill people by the hundreds; but with all their cleverness, says the Detroit Free Press, they have never learned to make what a savage can fashion out of a crooked stick. It has been stated that there is nothing made of wood which a Yankee boy cannot copy with the aid of his jackknife, but the man who said that had probably never heard of a boomerang.

Horace Baker of New York, who spent several years in Australia, and went "boomerang crazy," is said to be the first white man who ever made boomerangs that would "go," and he learned to make them by almost living with the savages and watching them as they sat whittling away at a piece of wood with their crude stone hatchets and sharp shells.

Besides those which he has made himself, Mr. Baker has the largest collection of real Australian black man's boomerangs in this country. There are almost a hundred of them, and a queer lot they are. Some of them are haggled as if the savage had used his teeth to make them, yet as true to the boomerang principle as the perfectly carved specimens which decorate his walls. He keeps them hung up in clusters as some men have their guns and pistols arranged with a view to proud display before their friends. A few of these date away back to the time when Captain Cook landed on the coast of Australia.

"Why is it so difficult to make a boomerang?" said this connoisseur of the crooked stick. "Well, because it is so delicately balanced that the least divergence from the proper angle will alter its course in the air and prevent the perfect revolution which is necessary to its flight. When correctly made, a boomerang should balance exactly on a knife blade held at its centre, if it doesn't balance, some more whittling must be done on the heavy end. That seems easy enough — to whittle a piece of curved wood into a flat shape — so that the ends balance exactly — and if that were all there is to it, any boy could make one. The hard part of it is to cut the edges in such a way that they will strike the air at a certain angle in one part of the curve, and at another in another part, and so on until every line of both edges contributes to the perfect revolution of the weapon. Then, when it is whirled, it has two motions, the rotary one, which is a result of its shape, and the forward one, given it in the throwing. It's a pity that the baseball players cannot 'get onto' those black fellows' 'curves.' A pitcher who could do it would make his fortune.

"The quality of wood used has a great deal to do with the excellence of a boomerang. The Australian brave will tramp miles to find a branch of the right shape, and a wood of the proper density. Gnarled trees are at a premium there, and the heaviest wood is the best. Our lignum vitae corresponds the nearest to the tree they like best. The piece for the boomerang is usually cut where a branch curves out from the tree trunk, for this is the most natural crook in the tree's formation.

"In throwing a boomerang, the savage holds it by one end over his right shoulder, his body turned to the right, then without straightening the arm he whirls the body back to front position, bringing the weapon with the arm still bent, with it, then suddenly lets go, straightening the arm at the elbow as he does so. This adds the force of the whole body to the momentum of the weapon, instead of depending entirely upon that of the arm. It will go whirling around, keeping straight ahead for a certain distance then gradually swerve to the left and at last return to the thrower.

"When a savage wants to kill or disable a kangaroo, he throws it so that it will strike the ground at a stated distance from him and then begin turning somersaults until it reaches the kangaroo, striking him even then with such force as to break a leg or kill him, if it strikes on the head.

"Or suppose he sees a flock of ducks swimming about on the river. He creeps up softly behind a clump of trees, throws his boomerang swirling over the tree tops in a curved line which he can calculate as well as a civilized gunner sights a straight one, and down comes the flying stick among the ducks flopping like a live thing, and killing or disabling everything within reach of its wooden wings. It really looks very much like a bird in its flight through the air.

"The savages have many different varieties of these weapons. The average length is twenty-four or twenty-six inches. Such as these are used in hunting birds, rabbits and other small game, and none of them weighs over three-quarters of a pound. There are immense hunting and war weapons which are as much as three feet long, but they are rarely used, and nobody has sufficient strength to throw them so that they will return."

Has Cow with Wooden Leg

1914

New York, Jan. 2. — James M. I. Galloway, veterinary surgeon of Kirkintilloch, Scotland, arrived yesterday from Glasgow with photographs of a cow with a wooden leg, which the veterinary says is almost as good to the cow as an ordinary leg of beef and much more effective in knocking out folks who try to milk her on the wrong side.

Other veterinaries laughed at Galloway, who is young and of an experimental temperament, when he decided to save the life of a cow after the leg had been cut off by a locomotive.

The only time the wooden leg gets the cow into trouble is when she stands too long in a damp field and the leg sinks in a foot or so. Mr. Galloway is going to visit his brother, a veterinarian of Washington.

Peg Leg Foils Texan's Attempt at Suicide

1920

Wooden Prop Sticks in River Bank and Stops His Plunge

Is Sued for Fish Slain in His Mad Scramble to Swim Out

SHIRO, Texas, Feb. 26. — John Relmer's peg leg not only prevented him from ending his life here, but landed him in jail on a charge of wanton destruction of private property. Relmer is 40 years old, and has been wearing a wooden leg of the peg variety for twenty-one years. Lately his physical disability has prevented him from earning a comfortable living on the farms or in this little town. He had had a hard winter of it and to add to his misfortunes he took the "flu."

Finally he decided he would end it all.

Relmer decided it would be easier to go via the water route. He knew of such a pleasant place where the blue waters were deep and the banks mossy and shady. It was in the field of J. G. Anderson, a prosperous farmer and fish breeder.

But here's the strange part of the story. When Relmer made up his mind, he at once hobbled over to the place he had selected to end it all. He wrote a little note and laid it on the bank, telling the people why he drowned himself. Then he leaped toward the still, blue water, peg leg and all. That blasted peg leg stuck in the bank of the stream and Relmer's troubles began to double!

Before he could wrench the peg out of the soft bank he had changed his mind about dying. He decided he would begin life anew, provided he could get out. He finally pulled the peg out of the mud, but found the bank so steep he could not climb it. There was nothing to do but swim across to the other side.

Here's more trouble, real trouble, was added to Relmer's burdens. With that peg leg as he swam across the stream he clubbed several of Mr. Anderson's fine fish to death. They were his breeding fish and he had paid a fancy price for them. When he found the dead fish with their head and bodies beaten up and the note Relmer left on the bank he discovered what killed his fish. Anderson had Relmer arrested.

"He should have more sense than to try to drown himself in my fish pond," said Anderson. "Even if he had succeeded it would have injured my fish. He should have tried a rope and a limb."

"I didn't intend to kill the fish," said Relmer, "but I'm glad I'm alive."

On the Antiquity of the Saw

1916

The saw is the earliest tool that has been traced in Egyptian history. It was found first in the form of a notched bronze knife in the third dynasty, or about 5,000 years before the Christian era, and was followed in the fourth and fifth dynasties by larger toothed saws, which were used by carpenters, but there are no dated specimens until the seventh century before the Christian era, when the Assyrians used iron saws.

The first knives on record were made out of flint and were in fact saws with minute teeth. They probably were used for cutting up animals, as the teeth would break away even on soft wood. Rasps, which are but a form of saw, were first made of sheets of bronze, punched and coiled round, but the Assyrians in the seventh century used the straight rasp made of iron similar to the modern type.

In the present day the saw is probably used more than any other tool. It has taken three distinct forms for the working of both wood and metal — the straight saw, the band saw, and the circular saw.

Policeman Shoots Man Twice — in Wooden Leg

1920

Queer Discovery Made When Victim Is Taken to Hospital

YONKERS, N.Y. — A few minutes before midnight Patrolman H. O. McPill saw a man emerging from between two buildings in a downtown street. He commanded the prowler to halt or he would shoot. The man paid no attention to the officer's command and continued leisurely down the street.

McPill took good aim at the man's leg and fired. The stranger did not stop. Again the policeman shot. The man continued to walk. McPill fired again. He shot at the man five times. At the fifth shot the man stopped.

McPill rushed to the man and seeing two holes in his trousers called the ambulance and rushed the man to the hospital. He was placed upon the operating table and Dr. Hemp made the discover that the man's leg was a "cork" one. Two bullets had passed through it. The stranger was taken to the police station.

Next morning the man was arraigned before Judge Hemp. He gave his name as Elmer Harley and related a plausible story. Judge Hemp pronounced him harmless and discharged him.

As Harley left the courtroom he said he would plug up the holes in his wooden leg and it would be as good as new.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 20, 1920, page 1.