46 
ALMOST HUMAN 
and Mr, Wilkie has timed one squirming in a snake’s mouth for half-an- 
hour before it was quiet enough for final despatch. 
The great family of constrictors do not kill their prey by poison. 
They do not, either, as is usually supposed, slowly and laboriously crush 
the life out of the hapless thing. They catch a victim by a bite aimed at 
the neck or shoulders, and then, like lightning, throw two coils about it, 
just above the heart; and the life is crushed out of it instantaneously. 
Thereafter the slow and steady coiling of the reptile about its victim’s 
body is not for the purpose of extinguishing the life, but in order that 
every bone in the body shall be crushed to pulp so that it can be sure of 
having a meal without getting a bone in the throat that it cannot negotiate 
and thereby get killed by what it seeks to live upon. 
MACAWS 
A FINE GATEKEEPER. 
For thirty-five years a magnificent hyacinthine macaw has guarded 
the entrance to the gardens. His name is Jacob, and he must be fully 
fifty years old, for when Mr. Le Souef brought him from his home in 
South America he was a well-matured bird, and he seems to have scarcely 
aged since then. It is, perhaps, as well that Jacob is not given to 
chattering about people, for in his long reign at those gates he has seen 
many a playful trick and many a queer action wrought by those who are 
now grave and reverend seigneurs. His sense of humor is so strong 
that he thoroughly enjoys listening to the inanities, or watching the 
antics of those who pass him by, and many a hearty laugh he has when 
they have gone. If people speak affectedly before him, they are con- 
sidered by Jacob to have so little penetration that he does not wait 
until they are out of earshot before he begins to mimic them with fervor. 
If old folk talk to him, he knows he must show respect to age, and so 
he waits until evening to fire off his comments upon their conversation, 
and his quavering hesitancy is most lifelike. If children have chattered 
inconsequentially near him he sends Time rolling backwards and revels 
in a long past youth of pranks and capers. The orders he gives, the 
directions vouchsafed, are shadows of the realities at the gate. If he 
sees people trying to go out through the entrance turnstiles instead of 
the exit ones he will call sharply: “The other way out! The other way 
out!” and keep it up until they realise he is speaking for their benefit. 
