94 ‘BOMBAY DUCKS 
the crow as unsurpassable. It is nothing of the kind. 
I verily believe that the average Madras squirrel could 
give the local crow its ten worst sins and then easily 
prove itself the greater villain. 
When a crow invades the bungalow it does so with a 
more or less guilty air. J. K. Jerome says that only 
cats and Nonconformists have consciences ; I think that 
the Indian crow should be added to this list. In any 
case, I have noticed that when a crow is about to 
commit a felony in my bungalow, he approaches it 
unostentatiously: he does not court observation, he will 
not commit the crime if he knows that your eye is 
upon him. 
The squirrel has no such scruples. Even as I write one 
of those villains is actually committing theft under my 
very nose. He is perfectly well aware that I am watch- 
ing him: he does not care two straws for that, he knows 
that, without moving, I can do him no harm, so he 
keeps one bright, wicked little eye upon me while the 
other is fixed on the food of my grackle (Eudlabes 
veligtosa) or hill myna, as the species is popularly and 
-incorrectly called. This bird has every day for its 
breakfast a plantain and a saucer of bread and milk, 
This latter is the object of the squirrel’s designs. The 
nimble little rodent climbs up the leg of a ‘bamboo 
table—there is nothing, by the way, which a squirrel 
cannot climb—and, having reached the cage, he inserts 
between the bars his two forepaws and thus abstracts, 
piece by piece, the myna’s breakfast. 
Strangely enough, the myna does not seem to resent 
the larceny. He sits on the perch and watches with an 
