We had a parrot but once, and that only for a few weeks. The bird was a mystery to me, and I found him almost too uncanny to be a pleasant acquaintance. Our parrot came directly from a vessel, but from what port I neglected to learn; he apparently understood the English language, but would not speak it. He preferred toast and coffee to any other diet, and was well-behaved, although tremendously exacting. When he became a little accustomed to us, he would sing the gamut, both upward and downward, in an absent-minded, dreamy way, as if recalling some memory of an opera-singer. He would sit beside me on a perch, seemingly contented, until he saw that I was absorbed in writing. Then he mounted to the table, planted himself on the paper directly in the way of the pen, or managed, by nips of the ears and hair, to get upon the top of my head and make coherent thought impossible. Once, remembering Campbell’s ballad, I ventured—though with some anxiety, for I half expected to see him flap round the room with joyous screech, drop down and die—to speak to him in Spanish. He was surprised, interested, and at first seemed inclined to answer in the same tongue; but after reflecting half an hour upon the question he shook his head and kept the secret to himself. No phrase or word of any kind could be drawn from him; yet the same bird, seeing my daughter a week after we had given him away to a friend, suddenly called her by name! The parrot should have been the symbol of the Venetian Council of Ten.
Three weeks after the great fire in Chicago, in 1871, I saw a parrot which had saved itself from the general fate of all household treasures there. It had belonged to my old friend, Mrs. Kirkland, and was doubly cherished by her daughter. When it was evident that the house was doomed, and the red wall of flame, urged by the hurricane, was sweeping towards it with terrific speed, Miss Kirkland saw that she could rescue nothing except what she instantly took in her hands. There were two objects, equally dear,—the parrot and the old family Bible; but she was unable to carry more than one of them. After a single moment of choice, she seized the Bible and was hastening away, when the parrot cried out, in a loud and solemn voice, “Good Lord, deliver us!” No human being, I think, could have been deaf to such an appeal; the precious Bible was sacrificed and the parrot saved. The bird really possessed a superior intelligence. I heard him say “Yes” and “No” in answer to questions, the latter being varied so as to admit, alternately, of both replies; and the test of his knowledge was perfect. In the home where he had found a refuge there were many evening visitors, one of whom, a gentleman, was rather noted for his monopoly of the conversation. When the parrot first heard him, it listened in silence for some time; then, to the amazement and perhaps the confusion of all present, it said very emphatically, “You talk altogether too much!” The gentleman, at first somewhat embarrassed, presently resumed his interrupted discourse. Thereupon the parrot laid his head on one side, gave an indescribably comical and contemptuous “H’m-m!” and added, “There he goes again!”
If the little brain of a bird contains so much, manifested to us simply because its tongue may be taught to utter articulate sounds, why have we not a right to assume a much greater degree of intelligence in animals to whom articulation is impossible? If dogs or horses were capable of imitating our speech, as well as comprehending it, would they not have a great deal more to say to us? Articulation is a mechanical, not an intellectual peculiarity; but in the case of the parrot, and notably the mino, it is generally so employed as to prove very much more than routine and coincidence. I never saw a mino but once. I entered the vacant reading-room of a hotel early in the morning, took up a paper, and sat down, when suddenly a voice said, “Good morning!” I saw nothing but what seemed to be a black bird in a cage, and could not have believed that the perfectly human voice came from it, had it not once more said, in the politest tone, “Good morning!” I walked to the cage, and looked at it. “Open the door and let me out, please!” said the bird. “Why, what are you?” I involuntarily exclaimed. “I’m a mino!” answered the amazing creature. It was the exact voice of a boy of twelve.
When we turn to the lower forms of life, a feeling of repulsion, if not of positive disgust, checks our interest. Very few persons are capable of fairly observing snakes, toads, lizards, and other reptiles which suggest either slime or poison. The instinct must be natural, for it is almost universal. I confess I should never select one of those creatures as a subject of study; but in a single case, where the creature presented itself unsolicited, and became familiar without encouragement, it soon lost its repulsive character. It was a huge, venerable toad, which for years haunted the terrace in front of my house. Strict orders had been given, from the first, that he was not to be molested; and he soon ceased to show alarm when any one appeared. During the warm weather of summer, it was our habit to sit upon the terrace and enjoy the sunset and early twilight. From hopping around us at such times, the toad gradually came to take his station near us, as if he craved a higher form of society and was satisfied to be simply tolerated. Finally he seemed to watch for our appearance, and whenever we came out with chairs and camp-stools for the evening he straightway hopped forth from some covert under the box-bushes and took his station beside some one of us. He was very fond of sitting on the edge of my wife’s dress, but his greatest familiarity was to perch on one of my boots, where his profound content at having his back occasionally stroked was shown in the slow, luxurious winking and rolling of his bright eyes. His advances to us had been made so gently and timidly that it would have been cruel to repel them; but we ended by heartily liking him and welcoming his visits. For several summers he was our evening companion; even the house-dog, without command, respected his right of place. One May he failed to appear, not from old age, for his term of life was far beyond ours, but probably from having fallen victim to some foe against which we could not guard him.
I found field-tortoises with dates nearly a hundred years old carved on the under shell. Such an aged fellow never shows the same fear of man as those of a later generation. Instead of shutting himself up with an alarmed hiss, he thrusts out his head, peers boldly into your face, and paws impatiently in the air, as much as to say, “Put me down, sir, at once!” I once placed one of them on the terrace, and let him go. Nothing could surpass the prompt business-like way in which he set to work. In a few minutes he satisfied himself of the impossibility of squeezing through the box-edgings, and recognized that there was no way of escape except by the steps leading down to the lawn. This was an unknown difficulty; but he was ready to meet it. After a careful inspection, he mused for the space of a minute; then, crawling carefully to the edge, he thrust himself over, quickly closing his shell at the same time, and fell with a thump on the step below. When he reached the lawn, I noticed that he struck an air-line for the spot where I found him.
I give these detached observations of various features of animal nature for the sake of the interest they may possess for others. The man of science may reject evidence into which the element of sympathy enters so largely; but he may still admit the possibility of more complex intelligence, greater emotional capacity, and the existence of a faculty allied to the moral sense of man. If one should surmise a lower form of spiritual being, yet equally indestructible, who need take alarm? “Yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast; for all is vanity,” said the Preacher, more than two thousand years ago. But Goethe is more truly in accord with the spirit which came with Christianity, when he put these words in the mouth of Faust:
“The ranks of living creatures Thou dost lead
Before me, teaching me to know my brothers
In air, and water, and the silent wood.”