258 BOMBAY DUCKS 
evil omen. According to my friend B. Kaccoo Mal 
Manucha, Rai Bahadur (whose book, “The Hindu 
Home Life,” should be read by all), “If you love a 
person who does not return your love, offer a dish of 
meat prepared with an owl’s flesh, and as soon as it is 
tasted, he or she will be head over ears in love with 
you.” 
Listen to this, ye languishing maidens and love-sick 
swains, listen! How is it that ye are so sad when 
spotted owlets innumerable are living in your neigh- 
bourhood ? 
But, stay, let me not raise false hopes! Not only has 
the owl, like the proverbial hare, to be caught before he 
is cooked, but when the bird is cooked, it is necessary 
to induce the object of your affections to eat him. 
This may prove a difficult task in this age of sordid 
epicureanism ; nevertheless, one can but try: it should, 
after all, be possible to cunningly disguise the flesh in a 
well-thought-out savoury. 
Owl’s flesh has yet another useful property, as any 
native will tell you. If a wife finds her husband in- 
tractable, if he persists in staying late at the club, 
losing money at bridge, and so is not at home at the 
dinner-hour, all the wife has to do is to give him boiled. 
owl’s flesh to eat, and he will, if he eats it, henceforth 
be as butter in his wife’s hands, 
But no rose is without its thorn. In spite of all the 
virtues inherent in the bird’s flesh, you must “never 
allow an owl to rest on any portion of your building, 
as that means ruin to the inmates,” 
This must be true, because Kaccoo Mal says so; yet 
