Pheasant House

The Pheasant House

In the late 1960's,while attending college at S.U.N.Y Geneseo, I worked a few summers as seasonal help in Erie County's Chestnut Ridge Park. It is a thousand acre sprawling expanse of park and woodland some 12 miles South of Buffalo,N.Y.. The most prominent feature of the park is a large hill, atop which sits an attractive stone-flagged casino that is a mirror image of a baronial manor in the Black Forest of Bavaria, in Germany. The enormous toboggan runs and sled hill here have been a source of Winter fun to hundreds of thousands of Western New Yorkers since the park's creation in the 1930's.

Like most of the Summer help, I was detailed to mow and trim the grass, paint shelters, collect litter and the myriad of other chores that helped keep the place clean and neat for patrons.

One of the more interesting tasks that I was assigned was to help tend the 1500 pheasants in the "pheasant house." It was then located near the old "deer pen" in the upper and older section of the park. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation had a program to enhance the pheasant population in Western New York. It involved raising large stocks of the bird and then releasing the full grown pheasants at various locations in the late Summer of the year.
Erie County, as a participant in the program, took delivery of some 1500 baby pheasant chicks in the Spring of every year. They were settled in to a darkened stone structure called appropriately "the pheasant house." The building had one end that opened into a small enclosure, covered with wire netting, so the chicks could come out during the day and get sunlight, water and food. Our job was to stop by and feed them daily, make sure they had plenty of water and determine that none were sick or injured.

In the early stages of their development, the chicks are cute and fun to be around. Picture walking amidst 1500 of the furry little chicks, all cheeping to beat the band. It was a balancing act trying not to step on them. We enjoyed the daily stop and smiled at their scurrying thither and yon.

As the pheasants grew older, the pheasant house became both crowded and decidedly more raucous. The fledging birds were wont to flap their wings and try to fly as we approached. If you got the whole bunch of them excited at once, it became a scene similar to the swarming bird scenes in Alfred's Hitchcock's classic movie" The Birds."

Still, the birds needed to be fed, watered and cared for, so we moved gingerly amidst them daily trying not to step on any or stir them up. The dried "pheasant doodoo also became deeper and more aromatic with every visit.

During our daily visits, the woodsmen and farmers among the regular park's crew would show us various lore involving birds and woodland. One of my favorites was watching "Homer" hypnotize a pheasant. He would hold the bird's wings together so it couldn't flap them. Then he would put the bird's head on the ground and slowly draw his finger from the bird's eye outward along the ground. The bird predictably struggled at first but then slowly began to follow the repetitive motions of Homer's finger along the ground over and over again. Soon enough the bird, through some process unknown to me, became mesmerized and silent. Homer would let go of the bird and it would lie there unmoving and peaceful. As city kids, most of the Summer help were both properly amused and amazed at the trick, if that is what it was. It was to be the first of many lessons on farm and field that I was to learn from the older and multi talented members of that park's crew. It was the beginning of a respect and admiration that I continued to have for these skilled woodsman and artisans long after I had become Commissioner of that Department many years later.

As the Summer drew to a close, the pheasants got bigger and the doodoo more aromatic. We knew that it would soon be time to "release the pheasants" into the wild. When the day came, we approached the "pheasant house" with some trepidation. Our assigned task was to enter the darkened structure quietly,walking ankle deep in pheasant doodoo, and one by one place both hands around each pheasant and scoop them up. Then, we carried each protesting adult pheasant to a thin cardboard box with air holes along its top. We placed 15 of our unappreciative and unwilling guests in each box and sealed it for delivery to the department of Environmental Conservation. The birds would then be transported to several "release points" throughout rural Western New York. The boxes would be opened in a field and the grateful birds would soar into the August sky, happy to be airborne and free.

As you can imagine, the task of boxing up 1500 of these rascals became both arduous and comical. At times, one of the less adept helpers would stir the pheasants up and the building became a sea-storm of feathers and squawking birds. We would put our hands over our heads and run for the exit, alternately laughing at and cursing our feathered friends.

Like all tasks, this interesting duty came to an end, or so I thought at the time. After lunch, the foreman came by and reminded us that we had to "clean out the pheasant house." "What? was the only surprised reaction that I could manage. "Why?" was of course next on my lips. The elderly and Summer-help weary foreman patiently explained that the "pheasant doodoo" was a valuable fertilizer and the nitrates in it were used to help flowers and plants grow at many installations in and around our county buildings.

This at least seemed some what rational, so wrinkling our noses and rolling down our sleeves, several of the younger summer help(me included) re-entered the building with our shovels. We shoveled the ankle deep "doodoo" for what seemed like forever. Finally, it was crated away to be used for fertilizer. Next, we set to the task of sweeping up the residue and finally washing down the place so that it would be clean and ready for the next batch of "guests" that were due the following Spring.

Needless to say, our clothes and our bodies were somewhat "aromatic" after the day's labors. You could watch the nose and then the entire face of someone wrinkle when you stood upwind of them. Somehow I never dreamed that this would be a valuable part of my education, but it was.

It taught me many things about respect for labor, principles of conservation and basic elements of agronomy and the reusable cycle of elements that was to become so popular years in the future. Farmers have always been the most natural "recyclers." They just did it because it made sense and was economical, not because it was fashionable.

Like all Summers, mine came to an end and I returned to my small college in the Genesee Valley with stories of pheasants and more pointedly "pheasant doo doo. It was the grist for a few laughs that year among my classmates who had more picturesque and less aromatic Summer jobs than mine. I haven't really thought too much about the "Pheasant House" since that Summer so many years ago. But even now when I see these graceful birds fly overhead, I wonder if I helped care for one of their ancestors so long ago. And if I did, why do they still insist on depositing their "doo doo" on my car on a regular basis? It seems a little ungrateful to me in return for the care I gave to those that came before them. But then I suppose there are many humans that ask the same unanswered question of the people around them.

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Joseph Xavier Martin