THE GREY PARROT. 293 



a noise like drawing a long breath, say, 'Better now,' and 

 begins to laugh." "If any one happens to cough or sneeze, 

 she says, 'what a bad cold.' She calls the cat very plainly, 

 saying, 'puss, puss,' and then answers 'mew'; but the most 

 amusing part is, that whenever I want to make her call it, 

 and to that purpose say, 'puss, puss', myself she always 

 answers, 'mew*, till I begin mewing; and then she begins 

 calling 'puss', as quickly as possible. She imitates every kind 

 of noise, and barks so naturally, that I have known her to 

 set all the dogs on the parade of Hampton Court barking, 

 and the consternation I have seen her cause in a party of 

 cocks and hens, by her crowing and chuckling, has been the 

 most ludicrous thing possible. She sings just like a child and 

 I have more than once thought it was a human being; and 

 it is most ludicrous to hear her make what one would call 

 a false note and then say, 'oh la!' and burst out laughing 

 at herself, beginning again in quite another key. She is very 

 fond of singing ' Buy a Broom ', which she says quite plainly, 

 but if we say, with a view to make her repeat it, 'Buy a 

 Broom', she always says 'Buy a Brush'', and then laughs as 

 a child might do when mischievous. She often performs a 

 kind of exercise which I do not know how to describe, 

 except by saying that it is like the lance exercise. She puts 

 her claw behind her, first on one side and then on the other, 

 then in front, and round over her head; and whilst doing so, 

 keeps saying, 'Come on, come on!' and when finished she 

 says 'Bravo, beautiful,' and draws herself up." 



Fanot To deny the parrot the understanding of what 

 Talk. it says, is to relieve it of the responsibility of 

 using bad language, and offering unsound advice, and this 

 it surely needs. A gentleman who was in the habit of 

 kissing his parrot and then kissing his wife, before leaving 

 home in the morning, taught the bird to say, on being kissed, 

 "Now kiss the missus," with the result that most of the 

 gentlemen visitors who took any notice of the parrot were 



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