324 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



As a household pet the mocking bird is simply delightful. If 

 taken young and reared in a cage he becomes very tame. He will 

 fly to your knee, eat from your fingers, perch on top of your head, 

 jump down to your shoulder, pull your whiskers, if you have 

 whiskers, give you little love taps on your cheek, and in a hundred 

 cunning ways evince his sociable and friendly disposition. He loves 

 to get out of his cage and fly about the room, and if there are no cats 

 about seldom attempts to fly out of the window. One caution, how- 

 ever, is necessary. A bit of cloth or a thread is a great find for a 

 mocking bird. He will spread out his wings, flirt his tail, cock his 

 eye, twist and turn his quick little head, and shrug his shoulders in a 

 comical pantomime of astonishment. Then he will dart to some 

 desk top or chair round, and the first you know he is swallowing it. 

 A few such experiences are disastrous. 



In New York there is one of these wonderfully gifted little pets 

 named Peter. He is just four months from the nest, and was taken 

 from Florida with several others before the stringent laws protecting 

 song birds were promulgated. He has already his Maltese .coat and 

 new tail, and is in every respect a precocious bird, not only equaling 

 in song many a full-grown singer, but rivaling the best of them in 

 amusing antics and in genuine intelligence. He takes the end of a 

 piece of thread tied to a spool, jumps over his perch to the floor, and 

 keeps this up till he has wound all of the thread on the perch, and has 

 the spool suspended in the air. Then that game is done. He next 

 takes a corner of the clean white paper that is put into his cage to 

 cover the floor every morning after his bath, and with his beak per- 

 sistently rolls it up like a carpet, and leaves it at one end of his 

 cage. He opens the latch of his door and walks out whenever he 

 pleases. 



Here in Orlando, Florida, the mocking birds are far the most 

 numerous birds. They are now protected by the most stringent 

 laws. To kill, catch, or even keep one in a cage, is an offense punish- 

 able by heavy fine and possible imprisonment. In a short space of 

 time the result is that they have multiplied wonderfully, and are 

 just about as tame as chickens. They frequently fly into the kitchen, 

 and have been known sometimes voluntarily to enter a cage in pur- 

 suit of food. 



One of the most interesting traits of these birds is their fearless- 

 ness. In defense of their supposed rights, and especially in protect- 

 ing their young, they will fight anything from a dog to an elephant. 

 One reason probably why the English sparrow has never obtained 

 much of a foothold in the South is because some mocking-bird con- 

 gress has passed " bird immigration laws," which positively shut out 

 this pestilent and aggressive European intruder. " Bobwhites," 



