A DESERT NINCOMPOOP 187 



made usefiil, if not ornamental. But an ostrich is 

 the last creature in the world I should want about 

 the house. In the first place the poor things are 

 regular nesting places for incredible swarms of 

 vermin. No doubt this misfortune accounts to 

 a considerable extent for the constant and ridiculous 

 jerking about of the average bird. Then the ostrich is 

 the original sufferer from dandruff. I suppose it 

 isn't real dandruff; but it looks like dandruff and it's 

 just as offensive, with none of the himian personality 

 beneath it to hide the defect. 



Once when my boys caught a yoimg ostrich we 

 gave it to a near-by government station. I passed 

 by a year later and found the bird nearly full grown 

 and very tame. But it finally got to be such a 

 nuisance my friends had to give it away. They said 

 it ate everything in sight that caught its eye— money, 

 jewelry, glass, nails, small spoons, and so on. 



I used to think that the things I heard about the 

 appetite of an ostrich were exaggerated. Now I 

 know they are not. The truth of it is that Nature 

 impels the birds to gobble hard objects into their 

 gullets to help grind the massed roughage that they 

 eat. But, as in other things, the ostrich shows little 

 signs of intelligence or restraint. I remember one 

 bird was opened some time ago in a French Zoo and 

 found to contain more than twenty pounds of iron, 

 lead, copper, zinc, stone, wire and other articles 



