“All that time in a cage, with only a run out once a day, and a row with the cat! Yes, all that time, and why not? What’s the odds so long as you’re happy? Ha! ha! ha!
“I confess I do dream sometimes of the wild dark forest lands of Australia, and I think at times I would like to lead a life of freedom away in the woods yonder, just as the rooks and the pigeons do. Dash my bill! Dick, but I would make it warm for some of them in the woods—ha! ha! ha!
“Sometimes when the sparrows—they are cheeky enough for anything—come close to my cage, I give vent to what master calls my war-cry, and they almost drop dead with fright.
“‘Scray!’ that’s my war-cry, and it is louder than a railway whistle, and shriller than a bagpipe.
“‘Scray! Scray! Scray—ay—ay!’
“That’s it again.
“Master has just pitched a ‘Bradshaw’ at my cage. I’ll tear that ‘Bradshaw’ to bits first chance I have.
“Master says my war-cry is the worst of me. It is so startling, he says.
“That’s just where it is—what would be the use of a war-cry if it weren’t startling? Eh, Dick?
“Now out in the Australian jungles, this war-cry is the only defence we poor cockatoos have against the venomous snakes.