POLL PARROT.
We were staying for some months at a seaport town in France, many vessels used to come in from different parts of the world; and I suppose the sailors brought with them all sorts of animals and birds, for the houses looking on the quay where the vessels were moored were almost entirely shops of birds, monkeys, etc., etc. It was most amusing to walk along the quay, and look at all the live creatures that were there exposed for sale. Such a chattering of monkeys of all shapes and sizes, such a twittering and singing from every imaginable species of small birds, such a screaming and chattering from the parrots and macaws, and such fun in peeping into the cages of white mice and ferrets. We often wished very much to buy a monkey; but Mamma did not fancy it, and said they were uncertain ill-tempered beasts, and that we should be constantly bitten if we had one. First, we longed for this bird, then for that squirrel, then for a cage of white mice, and so on; indeed I believe we quite tormented Mamma with requests to walk along the quay of animals, as we called it. At last we set our affections upon a grey parrot, the smoothest and handsomest among the large number exposed for sale. We never heard her say anything, it is true; but we thought that an advantage, as she would not have learnt to swear and talk like the sailors, and we should teach her to say just what we pleased.
The price of the parrot was rather high, because of her size and beauty, and we longed for her many weeks before we were her masters; but at last she was placed in our possession as a new year's gift, and, in addition, a nice cage with a swing, and tin dishes for her food, all the wood work being carefully bound with tin, to secure it from her formidable beak.
Cage and parrot were carried with us on our return to England, and she soon became a great pet. She was not at first very tame; but by much petting, and by leaving the door of her cage constantly open, so that she did not feel herself a prisoner, she gradually became more friendly. The first sign of love to any of us was after my sister's short absence of a few days at a friend's house. When she returned, we were talking together in the hall, and Poll's cage being in an adjoining room, she heard her voice, and recognising it, she came down from her cage, and gave notice of her arrival at my sister's feet by her usual croak; she flapped her wings, and gave every sign of pleasure at seeing her again. She did not, however, extend her amiability to any one but myself, sister, and Mamma; she was still savage to strangers, and would bite fiercely if touched, but if we offered our wrists, she would step soberly on, allow us to scratch her head, stroke her back, push back her feathers to look at her curious little ears, and in return she would lay her beak against our cheeks, and make a clucking noise as if she meant to kiss us. She used to waddle all about the room with her turned-in toes, and climbed up tables and chairs just as she pleased. She would get upon Mamma's knee by scrambling up her dress, holding it tight in her beak. When we were writing or drawing, she enjoyed sitting on the table, though she meddled sadly with our things, biting our pencils in pieces, tearing paper, and so on, and once in particular, she terrified us for her own safety by opening every blade of a sharp penknife, and flourishing it about in her claws as if in triumph. We had some difficulty in getting it from her grasp without cutting ourselves or hurting her. She was a famous talker, called us all by name, whistled and barked when the dog came into the room; called "Puss, puss!" and mewed when the cat showed itself, sang several bits of songs, and asked for fruit and food of different sorts. We never could teach her to sing through a whole tune. I never heard a parrot get beyond a few bars; and I wonder what is the reason that they will learn the commencement of half-a-dozen different songs, but still cannot remember any whole. I do think a parrot's voice and utterance is one of the most extraordinary of things, for it always repeats a word in the peculiar voice of the person who taught it; and, instead of closing its beak or touching the roof of its mouth with its tongue, in order to articulate, it invariably opens its mouth wide when it speaks, and its tongue is never used at all; yet it will pronounce m's, b's, p's, and t's as plainly as any human being. We could always tell who had taught our Poll any word or song, from the similarity of voice that she adopted. Her sleeping-place was for some time on the top of a chair-back in my sister's bedroom. When we were leaving the sitting-room to go upstairs at night, Poll used to waddle down from the cage and come to my sister, who held her wrist down for her to mount, and having been conveyed upstairs and placed on the floor, she mounted of her own accord to her sleeping perch, gave all her feathers a good shake, and settled her head for the night.
Very early in the morning, she used to commence her toilet. Such scratchings and smoothings of her feathers, such picking and cleaning of her feet and legs; and having arranged her dress for the day, she would come down, take a turn or two about the room, and then look at my sister to see if she were awake. If not stirring, Poll used to clamber up on the bed by means of the curtain or counterpane, get quietly on the pillow, and examine her eyes closely. If no wink was perceptible, Poll would gently and cautiously lift up an eyelid, pinching it softly in her beak, then go to the other eye and do the same; then she would wait a little bit, saying, "Hey? hey?" as if to ask whether her mistress was not yet properly roused. Then she would again work away at the eyelids, till my sister could no longer refrain from laughing. She used to feign being asleep every morning, in order to amuse herself with Poll's proceedings.
I wished to try having my eyelids opened by Poll in the same manner, and one night took the bird into my own room; but she did not approve of this change of quarters, and instead of going quietly to sleep, made such a croaking and grinding of teeth on her chair-back, that I was glad to carry her back to my sister's room. Indeed, although she was very friendly with me, she did not manifest the same attachment as towards my sister and mother, apparently preferring ladies' society.
While Poll was with us, we went another journey into France, and took the parrot with us in a basket. It was a stormy night when we crossed from Southampton, and Poll in her basket was placed at the foot of my sister's berth, and no further attention was paid her. The cabin was very full of people, and numbers had to lie on the floor, there not being sufficient berths or sofas. In the middle of the night, the inmates of the ladies' cabin were all startled by a scream from an old lady who was stretched on the floor.
"Stewardess! Here! Here! Some dreadful thing is biting me. I have received a shocking bite on the leg. Do search for the creature, whatever it is."
So the stewardess came and looked, and could find nothing.
My sister, who had looked out of her shelf at the old lady's cry, immediately divined what it was, seeing that Poll's basket had rolled off the berth to the floor, and she having gnawed a hole in the basket, had put out her beak and bitten the first thing with which it came in contact.
When the stewardess came to look for the monster, the basket had rolled, with the motion of the ship, to the other side of the cabin, and not finding a sea voyage pleasant, she put forth her beak again.
"Oh! bless me! What can that be?" cried another passenger. "Something bit me. Do find it, stewardess."
Then came another lurch, and away rolled Poll in her basket; and no one suspected a rather shabby old basket of containing anything but perhaps a pair of slippers, or a brush and comb, or some such articles. So poor Poll rolled about in her prison, inflicting bites on several legs and arms, my sister meanwhile in agonies of laughter on her shelf, and not daring to say who was the real offender, lest Poll should be turned out of the cabin.
At last the stewardess said that she supposed it must be rats, and she ran away at the entreaties of the poor victims on the floor to fetch the steward to search for the rats. Whilst she was gone, my sister slipped down from her berth, and took possession of Poll's basket. She had scarcely retreated with it in safety, when the stewardess returned with the steward; and rather an angry altercation ensued, the man insisting that there was not a rat in the ship, and the injured passengers insisting that sharp bites could not be made by nothing at all. However, after a long dispute, he begged them all to move from the floor, and made a regular search.
My sister was all the time in the greatest alarm, lest Poll should think proper to croak or sing "Nix my dolly," or otherwise to make known her presence. As luck would have it, however, Poll was either too sea-sick or too angry to say anything, and the steward announced that no live thing was in the cabin, and that the ladies had been dreaming.
"But bites in a dream, don't bleed," retorted an angry old lady, holding up to view a pocket handkerchief which indeed wore a murderous appearance.
This being unanswerable, the steward could only shrug his shoulders and retreat from the Babel of voices in the ladies' cabin; and soon after, my sister had the pleasure of landing, with Poll undiscovered and safe in her old basket, and we are ignorant whether the old lady ever found out what it was that had bitten her.
During our journey, Poll often caused great amusement, by suddenly shouting or singing as we were jogging along in a diligence or slowly steaming on a river, thereby astonishing and alarming our fellow passengers; nor did she forget, when occasion offered, to make good use of her strong beak.
At one place we were entering a town late at night, and the place being a frontier town, our luggage was all strictly examined by the custom-house officers before we were permitted to enter the gates. All having been passed and paid for, we remounted the diligence; my sister was the last. She had her foot on the step, when one of the men rudely pulled her back, asking why she had not shown her basket. She said there was nothing in it but a bird, but the man declared he must look; and seeing that my sister was unwilling to open it, he imagined there was something valuable and contraband in it, so roughly dragging it out of her hands, he tore open the lid, and thrust in his hand. Poll gave a loud croak, and the man rather quickly withdrew his hand, with a thousand vociferations at the bird and the basket and my sister. I must confess I was delighted to see that Poll had made her beak nearly meet in the surly fellow's finger.
When my sister had regained her basket, and we had left the gate, we lavished much praise on Poll for her discriminating conduct on this occasion. She would not have bitten my hand had I put it into the basket; how did she know that the hand was a stranger's?
When we arrived at our destination in the south of France, Poll enjoyed the novelty as much as any one. Now she revelled in the abundance of oranges and other fruits, eating just the best part, and flinging away the rest with lavish epicurism. And how she basked in the hot sun, and climbed about the cypress and olive trees in the garden, biting the bark and leaves, and almost I think believing that she was again in her wild birth-place, wherever that may have been! She accompanied us in safety on our homeward journey, went to Ireland with us; and whenever we travelled, Poll went too.
At one time she took an erroneous notion into her head, that she could fly; now this was an impossibility, for her wings were very short and small, and her body very large and heavy. Whether this had chanced from her unnatural life in a house, or from early cutting of her wings, I do not know, but she could not support herself in the air, even from the table to the ground. However, she thought she could, and on one occasion she tried to fly, when perched on the top bannister of a large well staircase of four flights. Down she came like a lump of lead on the floor below, and when we ran to pick her up, poor Poll was gasping, lying on her back, with her eyes rolling about in a fearful manner. We thought she would die, but we put some water in her mouth, blew in her face and did what we could to revive her, and gradually she recovered.
But this lesson was lost upon her. A few days after, she tried to fly out of a window on the first floor, and came down in the same heavy way, on the flagged pavement before the door. This time her head was wounded, and bled, and she seemed stupid for some days after; but she recovered and lived long after that. Probably these falls had injured her brain, for at last she began to tumble off her perch, as if giddy, and then her head swelled very much, and she died in a sort of fit.
I have seen other parrots who were better talkers than ours; but I never saw one so tame, and so fond of her own master and mistress, she used to come to meet us like a dog, when we came into the house, after being absent for walks or rides, knew our times for rising and going to bed, called us separately by our names, and really showed much intelligence.
Birds, in general, are, I think rather stupid, and do not understand anything, but what their own instinct tells them; but parrots seem to know the meaning of the words they learn: and if others do not, I am sure that our Poll did.