Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/212

 196 Popular Science Monthly

A Fowl and its Feathers Are Soon Riding a Moose in the Waters of

Rainy Lake

��Parted— With This Machine

IT was 0. G. Rieske's wife who led him to invent a mechanical chicken picker. She chased him out of their Buffalo home one day for attempting to pick a wild

fowl all over her nice,

clean kitchen floor!

Now O. G. can pick his feathered proper- ties in peace and se- curity. For the ma- chine he has invented leaves an ordinary fowl absolutely naked in less than five minutes. Moreover no feathers are scattered.

A small electric mo- tor turns a suction fan, and also a roller contained within the instrument itself, the power being trans- mitted by means of a flexible cable. The roller is hollow and its outer surface is pierced by a number of slits which permit the incoming blast produced by the fan to pass freely through it.

���An electric motor furnishes the power by which the fowl is picked

��The top of the instrument is hooded and attached to this hood is a little rubber roller which rests firmly against the surface of the larger drum-like wheel. The feathers of the fowl, sucked up against the two rollers, are plucked by having to squeeze between the rollers, after which they are blown to a tank. A thumb con- tact permits the hood to be moved around on its axis, and thus the relative positions of the two rollers are adjusted according to the needs of each case. The smallest wild fowl or the biggest turkey may be plucked with equal ease. A fowl can readily be picked in the dry state, but ordi- narily it is scalded. This device is very u.seful in hotels and restaurants.

��ON Rainy Lake, Ontario, the center of a virgin land where game abounds

at all seasons, moose frequently swim

across the arm of the lake.

After watching their chance and tim- ing the chase when one of the animals was about the middle of the lake, some hunt- ers cut it off by strik- ing directly across from a point.

Paddling very fast in their canoe, they came alongside the animal and the man in the bow of the boat let himself from the canoe onto the ani- mal's back. This in itself is a very diffi- cult feat, as any one who has ever handled a tricky canoe can testify. Balancing himself on the ani- mal's back, he sud- denly let go and threw himself forward, precarious position by

��maintaining his grasping two of the points of the strong branching antlers. Thus he performed the very unusual exploit of making the lordly moose ignominiously carry his would-be slayer to shore.

���This hunter performed the feat of jumping from the bow of the canoe on to the moose's back in mid-stream

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