Of course I did not keep him in the closet all the time. He spent a good deal of time with me, in no danger of being trodden on, for I have been so much with birds that I have developed a shuffling gait in order to avoid stepping on them.
Every morning I put him out on the roof-veranda, but he was never allowed to be alone with Sukey. If I left him I got some other member of the family to watch him. He behaved himself as long as we were present, but if left alone with her would seize her by the long neck feathers and wipe the floor with her. Sukey, who had continued developing, was now far beyond him. She abhorred this barbaric conduct, and more than ever before fled from him in terror.
She had now gone in for scientific nest-making, and her materials were more and more peculiar. One of the last I pulled to pieces consisted of assorted sizes of hairpins, a black-headed pin, a half-burnt match, a withered mayflower, a feather from an indigo bunting’s wing, and some little sticks of different shapes. I saw her one day tossing my mother’s spectacles up in the air, as if deliberating whether to put them in the nest or not. Finally she threw them on the floor.
Another thing that she did not throw on the floor, but put in the nest, was a garnet finger-ring that she stole from my dressing-table. I took it out, but it soon afterward disappeared. However, if Sukey lost it she did it unintentionally, for the nest would be its destination.
In addition to varying the materials she chose different and safer places for her nests. An old fur cloak, folded up on the telephone-table is a favorite spot. Last summer she sat there a great deal of the time, and did not object strongly to any member of the family using the telephone, but growled ominously when a stranger approached. One day I heard a man plead with her not to grumble at him.
Always of a jealous disposition, she has become more sensitive as to any attention bestowed on other birds. She will leave her food at any time to fly to me, and protest vigorously if she hears me petting another bird. If I am feeding a young one she flies right on it, jabbering excitedly, and tries to wean my attention from it to herself. She does not like us to notice any other creature, and some time ago she gave an exhibition of what we thought was jealousy of a dog.
She had been sitting on two eggs, and my mother one day took them from her. Sukey eyed her strangely as she did so, for to have any person but myself take her eggs was an exceptional thing. After my mother left the room Sukey followed her, and I followed Sukey. My mother had disappeared, but Sukey pressed right on to her bedroom, and flew to the arm of a rocking-chair. There she sat gazing pensively at my mother’s little dog Billy, who lay in a chair by the bed.
“What are you doing in here, Sukey?” I asked, “you never come in this room. Come back to your own.”
I took her there, but she would not stay, and once again I followed her to my mother’s room, where she sat staring at Billy.
I told the family of the occurrence, and we concluded that it was possible that Sukey had, in pigeon fashion, reasoned that my mother had stolen her eggs to put them under her own pet—the dog.