TEARING THE WALL PAPER. 153 



near the wall, peck at the paper till he found 

 a weak spot where it would yield and break, 

 then take the torn edge in his bill and deliber- 

 ately tear it a little. It was " snatching a fear- 

 ful joy," however, for the noise always startled 

 him. First came a little tear, then a leap one 

 side, another small rent, another panic ; and so 

 he went on till he had torn off a large piece 

 which dropped to the floor, while I sat too much 

 interested in the performance to think of sav- 

 ing the paper. (The room and its contents are 

 always secondary to the birds' comfort and 

 pleasure, in my thoughts.) A newspaper on 

 the floor furnished him amusement for hours, 

 picking it to pieces, tearing pictures, from 

 which he always first pecked the faces, dragging 

 the whole about the floor to hear it rattle and 

 to scare himself with. A pile of magazines 

 on a table made a regular playground for him, 

 his plan being to push and pull at the back of 

 one till he got it loose from the rest, and then 

 work at it till it fell to the floor. He never 

 failed to reduce the pile to a disreputable-look- 

 ing muss. 



The bird was as fond of hammering as any 

 woodpecker, on the bottom of his cage, on 

 perches, on the floor, even on his food ; and his 

 leaps or bounds without the apparent help of 

 his wings were extraordinary. Not infrequently 



