“Long as you like,” he replied, so without a bit of worry about time they went into the “Farm.”
At first Mary Jane was disappointed for there seemed to be nothing in the whole place but fences! But when they walked closer they easily found the Alligator Farm and there the girls were so interested that they forgot all about such creatures as ostriches. They saw big alligators and little alligators and tiny, tiny little alligators that would have easily been hidden in Mary Jane’s small hand. They saw the great big fellow, more than a hundred years old, get his food and such gleaming teeth as he had made Mary Jane glad he was inside an iron fence—there she liked to watch him, but she didn’t think he was quite the creature one would like to meet walking along a road. They saw alligators flop their tails to music—or at least the keepers said they flopped to music so it must be so!—and most wonderful of all, they saw alligators “shoot the shoots” into a small lake. There was no pretend about that; the ’gators climbed slowly and careful up the steps of the shoot, crawled over the top and then with a loud “thud” dropped their clumsy bodies onto the shoot and slid down into the water.
Mary Jane and Alice would have been glad to stay there all morning watching these strange creatures and Mrs. Merrill had to remind them twice about the ostriches and about lunch and more riding before they could tear themselves away.
They wandered over to the ostrich section of the “Farm” and found the queer looking birds poking their noses outside the wire fence begging as plain as could be for food.
“You and Mary Jane feed them, Mother,” suggested Alice, “and I’ll take your picture.”
Mrs. Merrill bought some food and she and Mary Jane stood close to the fence and handed it in. The birds reached their long necks out and nearly helped themselves out of the bags, so tame were they. One big bird seemed to take a fancy to Mary Jane and he was determined to get his food from her. Just as Alice was ready to take the picture he reached out and made a grab.
“Owh!” screamed the little girl, “he got it! Make him give it back quick, Mother!”
“What did he get?” said Mrs. Merrill coming close.
“My pocket book!” screamed Mary Jane who was fairly dancing she was so excited, “he just reached his bill out and grabbed it out of my hand, he did.” And sure enough, the great bird was making off to his nest just as fast as he could go (which was pretty fast) and from his bill hung Mary Jane’s pretty new pocket book in which she had two best kerchiefs and twenty-five cents of spending money.
The keeper heard Mary Jane’s screams (and so did lots of other folks by the way) and he came running to see what had happened.