Polly plays the guitar with her beak when I hold it close to her cage, ie, she touches the strings while I do the fingering.
I am teaching her to turn a little organ, and soon she will be perfect. Heigho! who knows that when, after a lapse of years, my pen and my gigantic intellect fail me, Polly may not be the prop of my declining years—Polly and the fiddle?
Another of Polly’s strange motions is moving her neck as if using a whip. This she always does when she sees boys, so I daresay she knows what boys need.
Her words and sayings are too numerous to mention. She calls for breakfast, for food, for sugar, for supper, etc. She calls Bob and the cat, and imitates both. She calls hens, imitates their being killed, puts them up to auction, and sells them for half-a-crown. She laughs and she sings, words and music both being her own composition.
She drinks from cup, or bottle, or spoon, milk, coffee, or tea, but no beer or ginger-ale.
Her water is merely used to float and steep her seeds or crusts in. When frozen one day last winter, I found her throwing the seeds on top of the ice, and saying, “Poor dear Polly?” in a most mournful tone of voice.
In conclusion, Polly is most affectionate and loving to me, and—
“If to her lot some human errors fall,
Look in her face, and you’ll forget them all.”