The jugglery of a mythophilic animal

Igrew up in a village in the Tatra Mountains. Each spring, my grandmother, who kept some fowl, allowed one of the hens to brood her eggs until the young chicks hatched. The clucking hen foraged for food for her offspring and protected them by all means; she would aggressively peck us children when we approached her young. I sometimes wondered whether the hen would have even sacrificed her own life if the lives of her brood had been at stake.Yet, when the chicks grew older, the mother hen's behaviour changed dramatically. She no longer protected her offspring, but would chase them away and no longer pecked at my siblings and me, but rather at her former darlings. When the young females became adult hens, they too hatched their own broods and the cycle continued—unless, that is, my granny's knife took them first.Quite regularly, my grandmother would also let a hen incubate the eggs of geese or ducks. Once the goslings or ducklings had hatched, the hen took care of them as if they were her own chicks, although I imagine that she must have been quite amazed to see her young marching in a row to a …